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Office Home & Business 2019 license no longer recognized after reinstall ("No license found")
Hello everyone, I'm looking for some help because Microsoft Support has not been able to solve this issue. I own a genuine perpetual license of Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac, linked to my Microsoft account since August 2019. The license is still listed under Services & Subscriptions, but Office no longer activates. My hardware MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012) Model: MacBookPro10,2 Intel Core i5 8 GB RAM macOS Ventura 13.7.8 Installed using OpenCore Legacy Patcher Office version originally working: 16.78 Later tested with 16.101 and 16.93 Same result on every version What happened Office had already been successfully activated and worked normally. I was able to: create documents edit documents save documents After restarting the Mac, Office suddenly requested activation again. Since then it has never activated successfully. Initially Office failed to activate with an unknown error. After completely uninstalling and reinstalling Office using Microsoft's installer, the activation process changed. I can now successfully sign in with my Microsoft account, but after authentication Office displays: "No license found for this account." My Office Home & Business 2019 license is still present in my Microsoft account under Services & Subscriptions. Even though my Microsoft account clearly owns Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac. Microsoft account The license appears correctly under: Services & Subscriptions Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac Added to my account on August 7, 2019. The website instructs me to open an Office application and sign in to activate. Everything I've already tried Uninstalled Office completely Installed Office again using Microsoft's installer Installed Office 16.78 Installed Office 16.93 Updated to Office 16.101 Removed Office containers Removed Group Containers Deleted OneAuth cache Deleted Entrabroker cache Removed activation tokens Cleared Office preferences Signed out and signed back into Microsoft account Deleted Office credentials from Keychain Reinstalled Microsoft AutoUpdate Verified no MDM profile exists Verified Internet Accounts Verified Microsoft account Microsoft Support remotely accessed my Mac and repeated all troubleshooting steps Nothing solved the issue. Additional information Running: defaults read com.microsoft.office returns: OfficeActivationLicense = NoLicense although: OfficeActivationEmailAddress = email address removed for privacy reasons is correctly detected. The activation window successfully reaches Microsoft's login page. Office now asks for my Microsoft account credentials. Authentication completes successfully. After a few seconds Office reports: "No license found for this account." It then offers only two options: Buy Microsoft 365 Use another account Microsoft Support remotely connected to my Mac, completely removed Office, installed a newer official installer, and the problem remained exactly the same. My question Has anyone experienced this after reinstalling Office 2019? Could this be: a licensing server issue? an incompatibility introduced after Office 2019 reached end of support? an activation problem related to OpenCore Legacy Patcher? something else? I would really appreciate any suggestions. Thank you very much. Additional notes: The Office license has been associated with the same Microsoft account since 2019. The same installation was successfully activated and worked normally before the problem started. The issue only appeared after restarting the Mac. Microsoft Support has already remotely accessed my computer and could not resolve the problem.jpdlimaJul 16, 2026Occasional Reader4Views0likes0CommentsMicrosoft 365 Apps SHOULD NOT overwrite Office 2019/2021 one-time retail installs
I want to raise a serious concern about Microsoft 365 Apps being imposed over existing Office 2019/2021 installations that were activated with legitimate one-time installation retail keys. In our case, these are not Microsoft 365 subscriptions and they are not licenses we can simply deactivate and reactivate freely. They are one-time installation retail keys. Once the product has been installed and activated, removing Office and reinstalling it later can make the original key unusable or trigger “already used” activation problems. That is precisely why the current behavior is so damaging. We have PCs with legitimate Office 2019/2021 installations. These machines did not request a migration to Microsoft 365 Apps. However, after internet connection, Office update activity, or Microsoft account interaction, Office appears to silently update, convert, or replace the existing retail installation with the Microsoft 365 Apps version. This is not a minor inconvenience. It creates a serious licensing and operational problem: -A valid one-time Office 2019/2021 installation is replaced by Microsoft 365 Apps without clear, explicit consent. -The original retail installation is no longer cleanly usable. -Fixing the issue requires uninstalling Office, removing Click-to-Run/licensing/account leftovers, and reinstalling the previous Office 2019/2021 version. -But because these keys are one-time installation keys, that reinstall process can render the original key unusable or create activation failures. -In practice, a forced Microsoft 365 conversion can destroy the value of a legitimate one-time Office license. From a user’s perspective, this looks less like a normal software update and more like an exploitative commercial strategy: using Microsoft’s control over Office updates, account sign-ins, Click-to-Run, and activation systems to push already-paid retail users toward Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Even if Microsoft does not intend that result, the practical effect is that users who already paid for Office 2019/2021 can lose practical access to their licensed product and are then nudged toward paying again through a subscription. This should not happen. A perpetual or one-time installation Office license and Microsoft 365 Apps are different products with different licensing models. Microsoft should not silently replace or convert one into the other because a Microsoft 365 account exists on the PC, because the user signs into Office, because OneDrive is present, or because Office updates are enabled. At minimum, Microsoft should provide: -A clear opt-in confirmation before replacing, converting, upgrading, or rebranding Office 2019/2021 retail installations as Microsoft 365 Apps. -A supported way to block Microsoft 365 Apps from taking over one-time installation Office versions. -A clean removal tool that fully removes Microsoft 365 Apps, Click-to-Run leftovers, licensing remnants, and account-based activation conflicts. -A reliable way to restore the original Office 2019/2021 retail installation without invalidating or losing the original one-time key. -Clear separation between Windows account sign-in, OneDrive sign-in, Microsoft 365 entitlement, and local Office retail activation. Users who purchased legitimate one-time installation Office licenses should not be forced into Microsoft 365 Apps by unclear update behavior. If Microsoft wants users to move to Microsoft 365, that should be a deliberate, informed choice — not a silent process that leaves the user cleaning up the installation and losing access to a paid retail license. I am not asking how to install Microsoft 365. I am asking Microsoft to stop Microsoft 365 Apps from taking over valid one-time Office 2019/2021 installations without explicit consent.AiPh0nJul 14, 2026Copper Contributor104Views1like2CommentsMarkdown and OneNote
2025 and still no markdown support in OneNote(touch supported version). This is Post ChatGPT era and all the LLMs generate text in markdown format. And I am pretty sure, a lot of people out there nowadays generate quick and concise notes through LLMs. But no, OneNote does not wanna render markdown. However, keeping source formatting can format text somewhere close to LLMs output. But not perfectly. The code snippets and tables does not render and appear as a mess. In simple words, I cannot copy LLM output for "Give me code examples of Rust's thread::spawn() function" directly into OneNote because it will be just appear gibberish. NOTE: There are two types of copying. 1) Select text and copy 2) Dedicated copy button in LLM output. So when I say copy I mean *2 as it preserves the markdown syntax.amarjotJul 09, 2026Brass Contributor8.7KViews14likes5CommentsSearching in a Microsoft List
How could a user restrict their search to a particular value in a particular field? Let's say I need to search for the value 'Williams' in the 'Company' field. I could enter "Williams" into the search bar, but the hits would include all items that contain the word "Williams" in any field. I want to restrict the search. How can one do that?JosephNierenbergJul 08, 2026Iron Contributor755Views0likes3CommentsAvailability in MS Bookings not correct
In our bookings portal, we set-up a service with 2 staff assigned. The first staff memeber is available, the second one is on holiday (time off) We have made this set-up in the back-end. If there is a booking on that day already sheduledfor staff number one for let's say 10h, It will still show this time on the front. It looks like it doesn't count the time off from the second staffKristofVBJul 08, 2026Copper Contributor29Views0likes1CommentStore-published Word add-in can't read or write the open document
We published a Word add-in to the Microsoft Store and ran into something odd that I'm hoping someone here has seen before. The add-in installs and opens fine. Signing in, the chat assistant, browsing our documents, moving between tabs ; all of that works. The problem is anything that has to actually read or change the open Word document. Pulling a doc in from our Sync tab, dropping in a template, running a compliance check on the current document ; none of it does anything. No error, no message, it just doesn't happen. So basically if a feature only shows stuff or talks to our own server it's fine, but the second it needs the actual document, nothing. A few things I'm trying to figure out: - Is this a known thing with Store-installed add-ins vs when you're just testing it? - Any good way to see why those actions are failing when nothing shows up on screen? Happy to share more detail. Thanks in advance.BcsDevJul 02, 2026Copper Contributor30Views0likes1CommentOneNote thinks my notes are by another person in my own notebook
Opened my own work notebook this morning (desktop version from a file on my OneDrive) and it showed the notes I made the other day as if they had been made by someone else in a shared notebook ie had KD (my initials) next to them. When I hovered over the KD it showed the same username/email as I am logged in with. I have checked and it is synced properly and opened the online version direct from OneDrive; I opened the "shadow" version on my C: in case it was due to a drop in connectivity, but no data is missing etc. My notebook was shared with a colleague, but she hasn't updated anything in it. Has anyone else had this? Any ideas?SolvedkathryndillonnewmanJun 23, 2026Brass Contributor13KViews2likes9CommentsRemove Archive button from Outlook Ribbon
I am attempting to deploy Office 365 using the ODT and the OCT. After deploying I noticed the "Archive" button is listed in the "Delete" group, on the ribbon. I have turned off AutoArchive settings, when customizing the OCT, but the option to remove this button is not listed. I have found the registry entry to remove the button and when I manually enter it, it works. I have not been able to find a way to enter custom registry entries, in the OCT file, that will automatically enter the setting. I attempted to edit the .xml file, but the button still shows. How do I edit the OCT file to add custom registry options? Thank you, EdBatman1458May 05, 2026Copper Contributor7.2KViews1like7CommentsOneNote Keeps Jumping to the top of the Page
This is probably the most annoying bug out there. This issue has been ongoing for years now and it seems like Microsoft is not fixing this issue. I have searched through multiple threads and I haven't found any solution for this... Microsoft OneNote constantly jumps to the top of the page when looking at an inserted PDF. This usually happens when I'm scrolling with my MacBook Pro trackpad. I'm begging anyone who has a solution to this to speak up. It is extremely annoying having to scroll back to a specific page on a 40+ page document. Sometimes, it happens every 30 seconds or so and it makes the user experience almost unbearable at this point. The only reason I haven't switched away from OneNote is that I have all my other notes on this program. PLEASE HELP!! Details: Microsoft OneNote 16.45 MacBook Pro: MacOS Catalina 10.15.2HosssssApr 24, 2026Brass Contributor23KViews18likes26CommentsIssue with viewing mode for E5 licensed users
I'm a sysadmin for a Health care provider in Sweden and we have an issue with users with an E5 license loading into Office apps in view-mode. As far as I know we are a coupe of organisations providing health care that have this same issue. Background: We have a mix of F3 and E5 licenses and sometimes the F3 licensed users need to view documents that contains info that isn't allowed to be saved in the cloud. To minimize the popups that show up when a user starts word unlicensed we have a GPO (viewer mode) that says that it should open i view-mode. Per my understanding this GPO is device based and not user based. However, this also affects the users of E5 license who regularly change workstations, easily 5-10 devices in a day. Since they should be able to view and edit documents in office apps it causes frustration and confusion when they load into view-mode and have to log out and then in again (or update license) and restart the program. Our computers devices are Microsoft Entra hybrid joined and shared computer licensing is enabled. Are there any solutions or viable workarounds for this issue? It's not complicated for users to handle but frustrating and causes a lot of tickets to the support team. Unsure if I'll be able to participate due to the time zone difference but will appreciate any and all help. /Per EkholmPerEkholmMar 20, 2026Copper Contributor168Views0likes1Comment
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