Forum Discussion
Office 365 "The fine print" popup message - is it legitimate?
Greetings,
I have been happily using Office 365 (mostly Word) for many years, and I have never had any problems with any of the products. This morning when I loaded Word I was confronted by a pop-up message called "The fine print" asking me to accept terms of use in order to continue. I have been using Word for several years on this computer and I have never seen anything like this, I just want to confirm that this pop-up message is in fact legitimate and not some form of spyware or adware impersonating Microsoft.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated,
Glenn
Here is a screenshot of the pop-up:
122 Replies
The advisory on this in admin center was never removed, just wording slightly changed. So i guess they are still "working" on it or this can still be an issue. Maybe they are waiting for a regular update window to push a fix through (08.14 was a day of usual security fixes).
Considering that it took almost a week to get this response, with the exception of one person who seems to relish opportunities like this to subject everyone to his humor and opinions (maybe wanting a job with microsoft ?) I'm not sure how you expected or felt everyone was patient !
Anyway, thank you Eric for finally providing an answer.
- Solved, my first option or angle of attack was to disable the Office Updates, the second Randy helped me out with though I would've assumed the same same 2nd process, which was to run Office Repair after disabling the Office Updates so it could overwrite any changed files with the originals. This should get rid of those 365 popups in previous versions of Office.
We just got off the phone with Terry from Microsoft 365 Technical Support. According to Terry, Tech Support has not received any information about this pop up. He said we should only see this pop up when 365 is initially installed/activated. It is OK to Accept. My version of the Agreement really didn't say anything....it didn't look like the standard Microsoft agreement. Hope this helps! (I also had pulled up my other Business 365 programs....all of them had the same pop up. But once I accepted the Outlook one, none popped up again!)
... this does not seem to reflect the behavior when it occurs in Office 2016.
Do we have any Microsoft information about this issue?
It sounds strange that Microsoft support claims that they have not heard of it happening to anyone with Office 2016 since there are several participants on this forum that are in that situation and I spent a long time on chat explaining my particular case.
I am adding myself so I can be kept up to date on this issue.
I am not about to agree to something I know nothing about that is supposedly coming MicroSoft without confirmation.
I will share that as someone else suggested, I successfully used "Restore" to revert to a one week earlier saved configuration - seems to have worked in removing the popup. I can now open my .docs, .xlsx, .pptx files without issue.
Would still like to get to the bottom of this and know if it is something Microsoft did or if it is a potential Trojan or Malware issue.... I believe the earliest post was on Sunday July 29... How long before Microsoft provides a meaningful response to this ?
Peter/Michael,
Great tip on the restore! About an hour ago the Mrs. called me over in a panic, she didn't know what to make of the popup (she had just downloaded meeting minutes from a friend when it happened) but knew enough not accept anything she hadn't intentionally accessed. I was a bit concerned because I have a legit copy of Office 2016 Pro and I accepted the EULA a couple years ago.
Anyway, my most recent restore point was and Automatic Restore Point from yesterday about 10 am. Rather that just restoring it, I checked what would be affected. Only one program/driver would roll back "Microsoft Office Pro....16.0.10325.20082"! I suspect we has a smoking gun.
What pisses me off ever further is the amount of info I had to let MS snoop into just to post here. I am one grumpy old man right now - will post restore results later today.
I work out of my home and I don't have a network or use 365. I use a single copy of Home / Student. I have lost DAYS of work and pay due to this. DAYS. If I don't work, I don't get paid.
I'm going to file a consumer complaint with my State's Attorney General over this. I've had it with Microsoft hijacking my time when I have purchased a product from them legitimately and they have yanked it back from me.
And - where is their support on this? Where is the group moderator? How can they let this go on like this?
Glenn and folks troubled with Office 365,
I am very disappointed with Office 365 and will be looking for alternatives and compensation.
Before I leave I did further investigating and ended up reinstalling Office 365, a product I already paid for. The steps I took under Windows 10 were as follows....(please backup your computer and track down your account/password info before trying the following).
1. Open "Apps & Features". Easiest way is to find this is type "Apps" in the search box next to the Windows start button/start menu
2. Scroll down to find "Microsoft Office 365" in the right hand side of Apps & Features and click it. This should open up a couple buttons (modify & uninstall). Click the "modify" button.
3. After clicking the modify button you should be presented with options on how to repair Office.
Sadly the quick repair option didn't work so I selected "Online Repair" then clicked the "Repair" button.
Best of luck.
What I'm not understanding is why a 'so-called' legitimate company is holding subscribers hostage unless they accept "the fine print"!!!! The product was working fine and now I cannot use it unless I accept. That's the same as me coming to your house and telling you how and when to clean it.
If you're going to hold subscribers hostage unless they accept your terms, you owe us full reimbursement for subscribing. I don't think anyone who posted their disgust with this 'accept our bloated update' expected to NOT BE ABLE TO USE A PRODUCT THAT THEY PAID TO HAVE ACCESS TO FOR A YEAR! As it currently stands I am unable to work at home. Why not give us an option to either accept or not....We paid for it!
Hi Helene
If you are on Office 365, I would equate it more to you renting a house and your landlord adjusting the terms of your rental per your rental contact.
The Microsoft End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) would specify clearly the right to do updates to their service as needed where users must accept the EULA to continue to use the Office 365 subscription. Of course no one ever reads the EULA and if you want to see some hilarious examples of EULA, take a look here: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-ridiculous-eula-clauses-agreed/.
When you stop using Office 365, your data will eventually be deleted and the apps you use will become read only (not sure if they cease to work after a while or not as it's never happened to me).
Per the post I made just after yours, if you shift to Office 2016 you will have control over your software and will only receive security updates (and possibly service packs with new features) to maintain your product.
This sort of thing happening is common and will continue as more software shifts to Software as a Service (SaaS). Adobe does the same thing as an example.
Hope it all goes well and best wishes to you!
Cheers
Damien
P.S. Having just seen your other post in relation to something I said earlier. If you are using Office 2016, you may have had auto update give you an update that could have triggered the EULA prompt. It's hard to tell as I don't use Office 2016 but I wouldn't discount the option.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4340798/july-2018-updates-for-microsoft-office
To further clarify, when I repaired Office 365 I had one additional step to "activate" it by simply opening an Office application and activating it with an email and password for the account. The good news was when I reinstalled Office 365 and opened Outlook I did not loose any emails. This sure wasted a lot of time, business, and sanity though.
Hope Microsoft gets this under control soon.
This afternoon I was using Office 365(version 16/2016) and one minute it was working but not the next due to the "the fine print popup" people are dealing with. I have not heard from Microsoft and won't accept it until that happens. However, I would like to remind folks that alternatives for accessing your email is through a web browser (https://www.office.com/) if Outlook has locked you out. Other alternatives such as libreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org) are good alternatives for Word/Excel/etc. until Microsoft can address the issue.
This is happening now to me as well (I'm based in Italy, the writing in the pop-up is in Italian, but still completely non-sense)... I've switched off my laptop in the office 1h ago, and reconnected now from home to finish the document I was working on and ... no way to use Office!
As othe users said already, this has to be fixed immediately, where is Microsoft, what do they wait for to give an explanation considering it is happening since this morning ?????
Looks like they jumped on the scammer - but how about the original problem? If you don't click on the accept, you cannot use the software - that goes for the entire office suite. Out of the blue, this thing comes up and Microsoft holds us hostage - we are customers that paid for their product and agreed to terms of service then.
It is frustrating that the giant (and profitable) tech companies outsource the problems they create to user groups like this and expect them to solve them. And - we can't go elsewhere, we are held captive. If I could, I would. I use these products because I have to, not because I want to.
C'mon Microsoft! Fix the problem you created.
Today would really be a very nice option for a fix to be applied. MS, stop holding your customers hostage!!!!
I saw this message earlier today after updating to Version 1807 (Build 10325.20082 Click-to-Run) Monthly Channel. Prior to this version/build have never seen this message before after updating Office 365 ProPlus.
On a remote session with a client that has Office 365 Business Premium, staring at this window. First report we've received. Concerned it was a virus now it seems this might be yet another Microsoft Flop by Design??? WTH? They just don't get life in a real world.
