Microsoft is investigating a known issue that caused ‘Product Deactivation’ errors in customers using Microsoft 365 Office apps.
According to online user reports on Reddit and Microsoft’s community website, affected users randomly got these ‘Product Deactivated’ errors in Office apps, leading to confusion and disruptions.
As explained in a support document published Thursday by Microsoft, these problems are caused by license changes initiated by administrators.
Problems with user subscription changes
More specifically, the problem arises when users are moved between license groups (including Azure Active Directory groups or synchronized on-premises security groups) or when user subscriptions are changed, such as when they move from an Office 365 E3 license to a Microsoft 365 E3 license.
It can also be caused when administrators remove and re-add users to license groups, change license or service plan settings, or enable or disable the “Newest version of Desktop apps” service plan option within the Microsoft 365 subscription.
Restart as a solution
To resolve this deactivation issue, customers can click the “Reactivate” button in the error message and log in when prompted. Alternatively, they can log out of all Microsoft 365 apps, then close them, restart them, and sign in again.
If the problem persists, users are advised to contact their administrators to check if their Microsoft 365 subscription has expired. Administrators can check subscription details in the Microsoft 365 subscription management portal.
For further troubleshooting, Microsoft advises users with open support cases to provide diagnostic data to its technicians. This data is collected using the Office Licensing Diagnostic Tool, which can help identify the root cause of licensing issues.
Sharing log files
Affected users are also asked to provide log files stored in the %temp%/diagnostics folder to support engineers.
Although Microsoft has not yet shared a timeline for a fix, its technical team is actively investigating the issue. The company encourages affected users and administrators to follow support channels for updates.
Last month, Microsoft also shared a temporary fix for a known issue affecting Microsoft 365 customers. It causes classic Outlook to crash or freeze when copying text.
In September, the company fixed another bug that caused Microsoft 365 apps (such as Outlook, Word, Excel, OneNote) to crash. This happened when typing or checking the spelling of text.