Help: Office 365 2016 Authentication message.

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Level 1

13 points

Help: Office 365 2016 Authentication message.

I installed Office 365 2016, but cannot get past the "The authentication session has expired. Please sign-in again" message. Spent a good deal of time working with Microsoft, and they were not able to help. I can go to another user account, and it will authenticate there.

Must be some issue with my user account. Any ideas? This is the administrator account, has lots of other SW configuration data on it, and has an extensive back-up history (both on Time Machine and an off-site backup solution). That said, I really want to fix this account, not replace it (if at all possible). Everything else appears to operate properly.

I've run Disk Utility (no issues), and Onyx.

Looking for good ideas and/or tools here.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), i7 Intel, 27-inch (mid-2011)

Posted on Dec 24, 2016 3:38 PM

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Answer 1

FoxFifth

Level 10

468,657 points

Dec 24, 2016 4:36 PM in response to John Lewczak

There is at least one thing in the following discussion in the Microsoft Office for Mac forum that worked for some: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onenote-mso_mac/cann ot-sign-in-to-onenote-for-mac-authentication/4a3f877e-f01d-4d1b-9f24-8627236aa58 d?page=1

Some other discussions there may also have something: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/search/search?SearchTerm=The+authentication+ session+has+expired.+Please+sign-in+agai…

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Answer 2

John Lewczak Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 25, 2016 6:38 AM in response to FoxFifth

Thank you, FoxFifth, for your reply.

Unfortunately, I had already seen those posts, and none of those strategies worked for me. Any other suggestions?

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Answer 3

FoxFifth

Level 10

468,657 points

Dec 25, 2016 8:10 AM in response to John Lewczak

Sorry, no.

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Answer 4

John Lewczak Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 31, 2016 10:04 AM in response to John Lewczak

I have an update that I hope might help anyone else seeing this issue. After a conversation with AppleCare, we decided to install the Mac OS Sierra update (I had been on El Capitan). I wasn't hopeful, since Office would authenticate in other user accounts, just not mine.

The long and the short of it was that it worked! Office now works in all accounts. After Sierra installed, I was informed that I had some incompatible software, which it quarantined. That was Gutenprint, software I hadn't used in several years. So no worries on that front.

For me, the solution was either upgrading to Sierra, removing Gutenprint, or both.

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