Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 repeatedly asks to “activate Office”

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Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 repeatedly asks to “activate Office”

I bought and installed Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 on my new 14” MacBook Pro (Apple M1 Pro, 16 GB, 1 TB).

The original install went well, the original activation of Word seemed to go well and I then quit the program, but when I next launched Excel things went wrong really fast. I had to “re-activate Office” but was soon greeted by a beachball and I could not activate Office until I force quit Excel twice. I later quit Excel and the same issue, repeatedly asks to “activate Office”, now occurred with Word, Excel and PowerPoint!

I have de-installed and re-installed Office twice, the MacOS (Monterey 12.01) once, performed every trouble shooting step in the books and the issue still persists !

Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 repeatedly asks to “activate Office!!!

Is Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 incompatible with MacOS Monterey or M1Pro chip?

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on Oct 28, 2021 6:21 PM

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Answer 1

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Rustybarrel Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 29, 2021 6:54 PM in response to Eric--F

I spent a lot of time in the MS Office web page(s) and things were not very helpful, so I decided to dig in and solve the issue myself.

After some careful studying of the MS apps home scree I noticed that at first the "lock" at the lower left of the window would first be there and then disappear to then reappear the beachball appear and the app become unresponsive. From this in concluded that I had either a corrupted licensing file or a License file for an earlier version of MS Office.

So I started digging thru the MacOS library and found the culprits!

I found my the problem with MS Office…

Wast wo corrupted files;

com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper and com.microsoft.office.licensingV2

These files were located is the system “Library” in the folders “LaunchDaemons” and “PriviledgedHelperTools”

It took awhile to locate the problem…

Now everything is working fine and incredibly FAST!

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Answer 2

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Oct 29, 2021 6:28 PM in response to Rustybarrel

Hello Rustybarrel,

We would like to see how we can help you with activating Micrrosoft Office. It sounds like you had no problems installing the software either time, only activating it. Only Microsoft will be able to help you with the activation aspect of the process, as it is their software to license. Check out the steps in their support link, and reach out to them directly for further assistance: Activate Office for Mac

Cheers!

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Answer 3

Oct 29, 2021 6:46 PM in response to Rustybarrel

Rustybarrel,

This MS product, Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021, was purchased how? Purchased at an Apple store or from MS online? I have two copies of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2019 installed, one on my MacBook Pro M1 (Big Sur), and one on my older Intel iMac (Catalina). The MacBook Pro install was actually purchased for a Dell Windows laptop, but seeing how that died, MS allows you to transfer to another machine, be it Windows or Apple. In each install case, to activate the software and have it remain activated, MS OneDrive needs to be installed and logged into. Once the activation "takes" you can log out of OneDrive. At least for me, that was the case with each install. I have no idea on the Monterey compatibility, as I steer clear of MacOS releases until they've been out for at least six months, in the case of Big Sur, I waited a year, and even then it was a struggle.

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Answer 4

Nov 16, 2021 11:50 AM in response to Rustybarrel

it worked for me - Microsoft Office License removal tool:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-remove-office-license-files-on-a-mac-b032c0f6-a431-4dad-83a9-6b727c03b193

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Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 repeatedly asks to “activate Office”

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