"Microsoft 365 license deactivated soon" error hits Office apps, official workaround out

Microsoft Office apps various designs on a black background

Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating an issue on Office apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and others wherein a user may come across a "Product Deactivated" error in Microsoft 365 Office apps.

For example, in Word, a cautionary banner would pop up that says, "Your Microsoft 365 license will be deactivated soon," and this is followed by "... most features of Word will be disabled. Ask your Admin to reactive your license".

Microsoft has explained what's causing it and has also provided a workaround for the issue. It writes:

CAUSE

Any change made by the admin at licensing level might trigger the issue. The following are probable reasons that can cause this issue:

Change in licensing group, where user is moved from one group to another (Applies to both Azure AD Groups and security groups synced from on-premises AD)

Changes in license/product assignment at the user level. Example: switching user license from Office 365 E3 subscription to Microsoft 365 E3 subscription

Removing and re-adding users to the same license group or different license group.

Toggling license or service plan for the users.

If administrators have turned off the “Latest version of Desktop Apps” service plan under the Microsoft 365 subscription for users.

WORKAROUND

Select the Reactivate button from the banner. You will be prompted to sign-in to reactivate.

OR

Sign out and close all of your Microsoft 365 apps, including Outlook. Then restart your Microsoft 365 app and sign back in.

If you're still having the issue, please reach out to your Admin to check for subscription expiry. For more information, go to Find out when your Microsoft 365 subscription expires.

Microsoft says that its engineering team is looking into it but also adds how users can help. It writes:

For those that have support cases open, please collect the Office Logs and the file information below and share them with your support engineer.

Collect Office license diagnostic. For more information, go to Download Office Licensing Diagnostic Tool from Official Microsoft Download Center.

Close all Office apps and then zip up the logs in this directory and add to your support case:

Logs: %temp%/diagnostics.

You can find the support article here on Microsoft's website.