Forum Discussion
SSO issues in Word and Excel, but not Outlook
Hi, Strange issue started a month ago at a customer site. They use RDS with Office 365 installed. Historically this has been working fine, then it randomly stopped signing in properly for all use...
Actually, slight amendment to that. SSO works normally from Outlook, it's just the license took 2 logins to pull down until we started saving the \appdata\local\microsoft\office folder.
However, on a new login you can do the following.
1) Start word, get prompted to sign in via pop up.
2) cancel and close Word.
3) Start word, get prompted to sign in via pop up.
4) cancel and close Word.
5) Start word, get prompted to sign in via pop up.
6) cancel and close Word.
7) You can do this all day...
😎 START OUTLOOK. A sign in window pops up and does something automatically and signs you in. (proper seamless SSO).
9) Start Word, it's signed in.
So, SSO is working in Outlook, but not Word or Excel.
SSO also works as expected to share sharepoint.com - login happens seamlessly, nothing to type in etc.
It's just Word and Excel that it doesn't work for.
However, on a new login you can do the following.
1) Start word, get prompted to sign in via pop up.
2) cancel and close Word.
3) Start word, get prompted to sign in via pop up.
4) cancel and close Word.
5) Start word, get prompted to sign in via pop up.
6) cancel and close Word.
7) You can do this all day...
😎 START OUTLOOK. A sign in window pops up and does something automatically and signs you in. (proper seamless SSO).
9) Start Word, it's signed in.
So, SSO is working in Outlook, but not Word or Excel.
SSO also works as expected to share sharepoint.com - login happens seamlessly, nothing to type in etc.
It's just Word and Excel that it doesn't work for.
Sorry my suggestion didn't work. That's a really strange issue your customer is experiencing.
It's either something to do with licensing or perhaps a Windows update if it's all been working fine up until about a month ago.
I would probably try to delete Office365 credentials saved in the credential manager if that's not too much of a hassle, then try and sign into Outlook, once signed in, within the Outlook app go File> Office Account > update license, then restart the app and try and open up Word and Excel afterwards and see if they still go into an authentication loop.
I did hear about Word and Excel issues (not necessarily authentication related) when some of our customers assigned Copilot licenses for example.
Do any of the logs (Entra ID + Event viewer etc.) show any errors/ interrupted sign ins at all?
It's either something to do with licensing or perhaps a Windows update if it's all been working fine up until about a month ago.
I would probably try to delete Office365 credentials saved in the credential manager if that's not too much of a hassle, then try and sign into Outlook, once signed in, within the Outlook app go File> Office Account > update license, then restart the app and try and open up Word and Excel afterwards and see if they still go into an authentication loop.
I did hear about Word and Excel issues (not necessarily authentication related) when some of our customers assigned Copilot licenses for example.
Do any of the logs (Entra ID + Event viewer etc.) show any errors/ interrupted sign ins at all?
- Hi,
I've tried most if not all of that already. Not about till next week to try anything else but in summary.
Have tried this with a brand new profile (nothing to clear from cred mgr etc). Same problems.
Have tried rolling back updates, again same deal (which surprised me, as I was sure it would be updates).
Copilot is not used in the estate.
There are no errors showing in the logs on the client / RDS / AD / Entra.
I have even tried running Fiddler and WireShark to see if I could find something being blocked, but nothing.
More testing will be done next week. Thanks for your reply.- We're experiencing the same issue. When starting word, there's no SSO experience, we get a login prompt. After which we get notices about usage. If we don't log on office isn't licensed. We also use shared computer licensing. If we log on, that's ok. I would grately appreciate it if you would keep me/us posted on your progress. I'll do the same, if I make any progress.
- No progress so far, though the customer has done some testing and it seems like the connected services within Word may not be signing in and that's what's throwing the prompt. More investigation needs doing, but I am not going to get chance till later in the week. But we are building a new server which only had Office on it, none of the other apps or policies, so we can rule a lot of things out quickly.
