Microsoft is investigating an issue where Microsoft 365 Office apps randomly produce “Product Deactivated” errors for users. According to the company, the issue comes from licensing changes initiated by administrators, specifically when users are moved between licensing groups or switch subscriptions.
The issue can also be triggered if admins remove and re-add users to license groups, change license or service plan settings, or enable the latest version of the desktop apps license plan under the Microsoft 365 subscription. A support document from Microsoft documents all causes as the following:
- Change in licensing group, where the user is moved from one group to another (Applies to both Azure AD Groups and security groups synced from on-premises AD)
- Changes in license/product assignment at the user level. Example: switching user license from Office 365 E3 subscription to Microsoft 365 E3 subscription
- Removing and re-adding users to the same license group or different license group.
- Toggling license or service plan for the users.
- If administrators have turned off the “Latest version of Desktop Apps” service plan under the Microsoft 365 subscription for users.
Reportedly, resolving the issue is as simple as clicking the reactivate button on the error banner and logging in with the account associated with the subscription. The other solution is to log out of all Microsoft 365 apps and restart them before signing in again.
If the issue persists, Redmond recommends contacting their administrators and checking whether their subscription is still active. Users can also provide diagnostic data to Microsoft engineers via the Office Licensing Diagnostic Tool, which can help find the root cause of the issue. Other logs are stored in the Windows’ %temp% directory and can also be provided for faster resolution.
Remember that these “fixes” are simply workarounds, and there’s no patch at the time of writing. Microsoft engineers are still investigating the issue.
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