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Unable to open in desktop app a shared OneDrive file

Anonymous
2022-12-30T18:49:27+00:00

Hello -

I saw the below inquiry posted in 2020 but no responses were posted to it. I am having the same issue, exactly as outlined below. My husband is able to open the desktop app on his computer and I am not able to on mine. The shared files have both our microsoft accounts listed with full access. I've been searching the web for solutions but no luck yet. Any help would be appreciated. I have the same issue with both Word documents and Excel files.

I have edit permissions to a set of files that someone shared with me through OneDrive. I access the files through a browser and can edit them through Office apps online. However, there are some features of Excel, for example, that you can't use in Excel online so I open the file using the "Open in Desktop App" function. This all worked seamlessly on my old PC but I recently purchased a new PC.

Now I can still open the Excel file using Excel online but when I try to "Open in Desktop App", I am prompted for my Microsoft Account. I type in my email address and click Next, the dialog box flashes, and returns to asking me for my email address. I never get a prompt for my password. On the old PC I didn't have the prompt for my Microsoft Account.

At the time I'm accessing the shared file in OneDrive and when I edit it online I am logged into my Microsoft Account. Why is prompting me for my account again with I try to go to the desktop Excel? If it does need the account again, why don't I get a prompt for the password?

I'm on a current version of Windows 10 and have current version of Office for Home.

Some additional information: my husband has his own log in on the same computer and his own Microsoft account with access to edit the same shared files. He can log in to the PC, access the shared Excel files and can use the desktop app without getting a prompt to log in to a Microsoft account. Is this some how related to the credentials? I was the first to create an account on the machine.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | Other | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-01-20T22:02:16+00:00

    Thank you for the information. It didn't quite solve the issue, but it led me to figuring it out. I realized that even though I was logged into my Office account, my computer was attempting to open the documents using his account, which is why it wouldn't validate when I entered my information. I found this by clicking on File - Account in the Word application. This is where I saw my husband's account listed under the User Information, rather than mine. I clicked on "switch account" and entered my Office login and it's been working great since then.

    I'm still confused why it was trying to use his account, especially when I was logged into Office under my own account, but happy we finally got it working.

    I appreciate your time and assistance. Hopefully this can help others.

    Kelli

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-01-03T16:58:28+00:00

    Thank you for the response. I did confirm I am logged into Microsoft 365. When I open Word, it shows I’m signed in with my account and under Subscription Product it says, “Microsoft 365 belongs to: <my email address>. This product contains…” and all the icons for the Microsoft Office suite are displayed. I do have one correction to my original email. I am on Windows 11 Pro, rather than Windows 10. Does that make a difference at all?

    A bit more info, this is a family subscription of Microsoft 365. My husband is the administrator and he shared one of his 5 licenses with me.  It allows me to open the document in the web app, but many features are not available in the web app that I need so I need it in desktop version. It does allow me to download the file to desktop and work from there, but the whole reason we wanted to utilize OneDrive was to be able to simultaneously edit a document at the same time or see when the other is in editing one so we don’t override each other’s work.

    I appreciate any help or insight you can provide.

    Kelli H-MT

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-01-23T13:14:10+00:00

    Next time if you encounter similar issues, sign out all of the accounts in Office, back up and remove all the credentials in Credential Manager, and then sign in to Office again. It might be the credentials on this device that went wrong.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-01-06T01:37:36+00:00

    Then let's do some troubleshooting to narrow down the problem:

    1. Sign in to https://onedrive.live.com with your account in another browser and try again. If it works fine, there may have been an error before when the browser interacted with the Office desktop app.
    2. Use your husband's account to sign into the Office desktop app on your device and try again. If the problem no longer occurs, there may be something wrong with your account.
    3. Create a new administrator account in Windows and try again in this account. This helps determine if the Windows account profile you used before is corrupted.

    Please do let me know the results.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-12-31T08:01:40+00:00

    Hello, Kelli H-MT

    Welcome to Microsoft Community.

    Were you also prompted to enter your account name and password when you wanted to open the file in desktop app? If so, have you checked whether you've added your account in Connected Services (Go to File > Account > Connected Services), or you've signed into Office with this account (Go to File > Account > User Information)? To open a file in the desktop application, you need to sign into the Microsoft account to which the file belongs in the Office desktop app.

    Also, if you still can't open the file even after logging into your Microsoft account in Office desktop app, have you tried downloading the file directly from https://onedrive.live.com  to your computer and then opening the downloaded file directly?

    Looking forward to your reply.

    Best regards

    Yuhao Li

    Microsoft Community Technical Support

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