Troubleshoot issues with shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus
Summary: Explains how to troubleshoot issues with deployments of Office 365 ProPlus that are configured to use shared configured activation.
If you’re having problems getting shared computer activation to work when you deploy Office 365 ProPlus to shared computers in your organization, try the following to fix the problem.
To use shared computer activation, you must have an Office 365 plan that includes Office 365 ProPlus.
 Note: |
|---|
| You also can use shared computer activation with Visio Pro for Office 365 or Project Pro for Office 365. You just need an Office 365 plan that includes those products. |
Here are two ways that you can check whether shared computer activation is enabled on the computer that has Office 365 ProPlus installed.
- Open any Office 365 ProPlus program, such as Word. Go to File > Account.
If shared computer activation is enabled, you’ll see less information in the Product Information section, as shown in the following screen shots.
The screen shot labeled A is what you see when you deploy Office 365 ProPlus with shared computer activation. The screen shot labeled B is what you see when you deploy Office 365 ProPlus with product key activation. - Use Registry Editor, and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\ClickToRun\Configuration. There should be an entry for SharedComputerLicensing with a setting of 1.
On the shared computer, after you open any Office 365 ProPlus program, go to the following folder:
%localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Licensing
If activation succeeded, there are some text files in the folder. Don’t make any changes to these files.
If you’re having problems using shared computer activation, you might get one of the following error messages.
This error means that you don’t have an Office 365 plan that includes Office 365 ProPlus. Therefore, you can’t use shared computer activation.
This error means that a licensing token wasn’t obtained from the Office Licensing Service on the Internet. Office 365 ProPlus is now in reduced functionality mode. The user can view and print Office 365 ProPlus documents, but can’t create or edit documents.
You can try these steps to fix this problem:
- Check that the user is assigned a license for Office 365 ProPlus.
- Check that the user signs in with her user account for Office 365 if the Activate Office dialog box appears when the user opens an Office 365 ProPlus program.
- Check that there is connectivity between the shared computer and the Internet.
This error means that Office 365 ProPlus has a problem with the user’s licensing token on the shared computer. The user should make sure to sign in to Office 365 ProPlus with his user account for Office 365 so that Office 365 ProPlus can obtain a new licensing token from the Office Licensing Service on the Internet.
This error means that Office 365 ProPlus tried to renew the licensing token automatically, but there was a problem. One possible cause for this is that the shared computer wasn’t connected to the Internet when Office 365 ProPlus tried to renew the licensing token with the Office Licensing Service.
The licensing token is valid until the date listed in the error message. The user can continue to use Office 365 ProPlus to create, edit, and print documents. The user can choose Renew to try to renew the license before the license token expires.
Microsoft places a limit on the number of shared computers that a user can activate Office 365 ProPlus on in a given time period. This error means that the user exceeded that limit.
