Authentication issue in MS office 2016 Excel and Word

Question

Authentication issue in MS office 2016 Excel and Word

Jānis Semjonovs 5

Hello! We are facing issue where users are not able to sign in office 2016 excel and word, not completly login window ispresented with no button working on it, except "Sign UP", typing My email address also do nothing. This issue is on many devices and accounts, company owned and personal.

image (16)

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2 answers

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Answer 1

Haytham-C 5,130 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hello Jānis Semjonovs

Thank you for reaching out and informed us about the issue with Office 16. Based on your screenshot it seems that the issue could be due to authentication component failure/sync issue.
Just a quick note, Office 16 has reached its end of support in 2025 so Microsoft no longer provider security updates, bug fixes or technical support anymore, but you can try these workaround instead.

Verify Microsoft credentails sign-in works in a browser

On an affected device:

Go to https://account.microsoft.com
Sign in successfully

If browser sign-in works but Office sign-in does not, the issue is localized to Office authentication components.

Clear Office credentials:

On search bar, search for Credential Manager then open
Remove any entries related to Microsoft Office
Restart your PC then open Office again and login

Repair Office:

Please check this article: Repair an Office app

Please try the workaround and see if it works.

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Jānis Semjonovs 5 Reputation points

2026-09-09T05:03:09.5866667+00:00

Hi
Thank You for response.
We have tried all mention things, user is able to sign in web account, web excel, desktop teams, onedrive, outlook it just office 2016 not working. As I mentioned we did fresh install and update on laptops as well, on our company network and personal, all have same issue with office 2016. My guess there are some authetification endpoints disabled by microsoft.
Haytham-C 5,130 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-09-09T15:26:28.2733333+00:00

Hello Jānis Semjonovs

Thanks for the response. As I mentioned earlier, with the product reaching its end of support, there is likely a high chance that Microsoft could disabled authentication of its older product. However, you mentioned that user can still login to web version of Office, I would advise stick to that workaround at the moment.

Answer 2

GVB 10

We have the same misery since last Friday but mainly when trying to open sharepoint documents in the desktop app.

A workaround for that issue is synchronizing the (top) folder you work in with onedrive and open it locally via the explorer then the login is bypassed.

Jānis Semjonovs 5 Reputation points

2026-09-09T09:29:50.3633333+00:00

Hi
Thank You for advice, but the issue that user have to sign-in for macros to work and for co authoring. Yes, it is possible to use excel by just closing sign in window.