Unable to accept family subscription share

Karin Suchy 0 Reputation points
2026-09-16T04:25:48.8+00:00

Hello,

Yesterday (15 Sep 02026) I cancelled my Personal MS subscription. It will cease on 26 Oct 2026.

A family member is the Subscription Owner of their Microsoft 365 Family subscription and has sent me the email invite to join them.

When opening the email, I click on 'Get Started', and I'm redirected to a page on my BRAVE browser stating "You've been invited to use a Microsoft 365 Family subscription".

I click the 'Join Now' icon. Apparently the 'Get started / Accept' icon should appear, but it doesn't.

Instead, an error message appears :

"Looks like this invitation link is not working.

1 more step to go: Please ask organizer to go to Subscriptions tab on account.microsoft.com and click on Start Sharing for you."

The Subscription Owner has no 'Start Sharing' icon to click.

#1 - Is it possible that my Personal MS subscription (now cancelled, but valid until 26 Oct 2026) could be preventing me from joining another subscription?
#2 - I've removed all shields on the BRAVE Browser so this should not be a show stopper.
If not, I'm at a loss why this is not working.

TIA & Regards
Karin

Microsoft 365 and Office | Subscription, account, billing | For home | Windows
0 comments

4 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest

  1. AI answer

    2026-09-16T04:26:06.0133333+00:00

    Yes. An active Microsoft 365 Personal subscription on the same account can prevent the shared Family benefit from showing as active until the Personal subscription fully expires. Turning off recurring billing or canceling does not end it immediately; it continues until the expiration date.

    For this scenario:

    1. Keep recurring billing off on the Personal subscription.
    2. Confirm the family invitation was accepted with the same Microsoft account that had the Personal subscription.
    3. If the account is already shown as part of the Microsoft family group, wait until the Personal subscription reaches its end date on 26 Oct 2026.
    4. After that date, sign in to the Microsoft account and check whether Microsoft 365 shows as shared by the family subscription owner.
    5. If desktop apps still show the old license after expiry, open an Office app and update the license by signing in again.

    About the specific invitation error:

    • The subscription owner is the only person who can share the subscription.
    • Sharing works only if the owner has an active Microsoft 365 Family, Premium, or Pro subscription and has shares remaining.
    • The dashboard may not update correctly until the invited person has selected Join now and joined the family group.
    • If the invitation flow is stuck or the shared benefit still does not appear after the Personal subscription expires, the practical next step is for the owner to remove the share/family entry and send a new invitation.

    If OneDrive storage is part of the concern, the 1 TB benefit can take up to 2 hours after acceptance to appear. In that case, go to Manage storage, refresh the page, and check again.

    If the issue continues after the Personal subscription expiry and a re-invite, use Microsoft Support through Contact Support.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

    Was this answer helpful?

  2. Karin Suchy 0 Reputation points
    2026-09-16T04:55:41.83+00:00

    It has only answered one part of my question.

    The second part of my question was around the error message :

    "Looks like this invitation link is not working.

    1 more step to go: Please ask organizer to go to Subscriptions tab on account.microsoft.com and click on Start Sharing for you."

    It seems to me the system is looping.

    Firstly, the Subscription Owner did initially share the subscription to my email (via 'Share Subscription / Share / Email invite').

    Then, I clicked join.

    Then the error message appeared, asking the Subscription Owner to click 'Start Sharing'. If this is the same as 'Share Subscription / Share / Email invite', then the system is looping.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Karin Suchy 0 Reputation points
    2026-09-16T05:08:39.0433333+00:00

    Only partially helpful.

    I will need to monitor this until 26 Oct 2026.
    As a worse case scenario, if I am unable to gain access to the Subscription Owner's family account, I will need to reinstate my original personal account (which would be a most undesirable outcome).

    Thx.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Kai-H 26,950 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-09-16T09:25:45.7066667+00:00

    Hi, Karin Suchy

    The message indicates a mismatch between the family-group record and the subscription-sharing record. An unexpired Microsoft 365 Personal subscription should not prevent you from joining the owner’s family group, so waiting until October 26 may not resolve this specific loop.

    Here are some suggestions you can try:

    Open the Microsoft Family page directly in a private browser window, sign in with the invited Microsoft account, and check whether a pending invitation appears there. Accept it from that page instead of using the email button.

    If you already appear as a member of the owner’s family group, have the owner open the subscription-sharing page. Start sharing only appears beside family members who have joined but do not yet have subscription benefits.

    Confirm that the owner is signed in with the exact Microsoft account that purchased the Family subscription, not another account shown in the browser.

    If you are listed as a family member but Start sharing is still missing, this points to a stuck account-side sharing record. Contact Microsoft Support, select Microsoft 365 > Manage subscription, and ask them to check the Family membership and subscription-sharing records. Reinstalling Office or changing Brave settings will not correct that account-side state.

    Please be advised that this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators and contributors, including external Microsoft employees, are not allowed to directly interfere with Microsoft product features or access back-end systems. Our role is limited solely to providing technical guidance on reported incidents, requests, or ideas.   

    Thank you for your patience in reading, I hope this information has been helpful to you. 

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Yes" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment."    

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

    Was this answer helpful?

Your answer

Answers can be marked as 'Accepted' by the question author and 'Recommended' by moderators, which helps users know the answer solved the author's problem.