Forum Discussion
Issue 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 Ekholm
1 Reply
The observed issue stems from the fact that the Group Policy configuration for Office Viewer Mode is applied at the device level rather than the user level. As a result, all users including those with Microsoft 365 E5 licenses are forced into view-only mode. According to Microsoft’s official guidance, organizations should instead leverage Shared Computer Activation (SCA) for Microsoft 365 Apps. SCA ensures that licensing entitlements are applied on a per-user session basis, thereby allowing properly licensed users to access full editing functionality without being restricted by a device-wide viewer mode policy.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/licensing-activation/overview-shared-computer-activation
