Offline access to Office 365?

how do i even get to the office products offline, something so simple before turned into a headache!!!!!

Jack, and everyone else, you cannot work offline without issues - I don't care what Microsoft wants you to believe. Try this: connect to the internet and launch Word.  If your account's activation needs renewing you'll be required to log into your Office account. Once that's done and you have Word working, disconnect from the internet. You should be able to work on the open document and save it to a local drive. Now launch Excel - you'll be informed that a internet connection can't be found and are prompted to log into your Office account to verify activation or enter an activation code. Why isn't the activation obtained for Word applicable for Excel and the other apps in the suite, as well?????

If you try to back out of the activation prompts you will be presented with a box entitled "Getting your new Office ready for you. Hold on, this should take a few moments..." THAT NEVER GOES AWAY and the only way to get rid of it is to end the application's task in Task Manager. Even reconnecting to the internet at this point does not end this endless box.

I will not be renewing my Office 365 subscription when it is due next month and will be going with another office productivity suite that will be fully functional from my local drives. Microsoft has it's head in its cloud and doesn't care about anyone else who has no need to live and work in the cloud 24/7.

It's interesting to see that this is still an issue. This has obviously not been taken in at all.

I subscribed to have Office 365 on my laptops and get the same prompt "Couldn't verify subscription". I was connected to the internet all day yesterday, was signed in to my account when it upgraded to Office 2016, then worked on my files first online and then offline for a while - which worked ok - and then couldn't work on anything anymore this morning on the train when I NEEDED to finish it. 

I do regularly connect to the internet to run updates, so this shouldn't come up at all and yet it does. I might even be willing to consider accepting that MS wants me to go online every few months during my subscription) if it would give me a few days notice. 

But then, I have paid for this for a 4 year subscription, my machine is registered and Office is verified. Get off my back, Microsoft, and learn how to use a calendar which tells when my subscription expires. This is ridiculous. 

That's how you loose customers. Well done.

MS does not want us to work offline. That is why I use LibreOffice. It is free and works fine offline. Vote with your feet folks. Do not put up with this nightmare or Metro or "Modern" that take over the whole screen, in large type that has very little information visible and I can only use ONE app at a time, unless I am willing to go through a tedious process to change, while trying to remember the info that I had to memorize, as I go to the other app. If Smart Phone and tablet users are will to put up with that, that is between MS and them.

I am not playing with my Smart Phone, I want to be PRODUCTIVE on my computer. I want to be able to read two full pages of letter sized or A4 text on ONE screen at ONE time. Not read a fortune cookie.

So my client's CEO flew to China to do a sales presentation. They are not permitted to have internet access in the area they are in.  The CEO's Office 365 activation prompt came up and now she can't do any work.  Is that the way this product is designed to work, because if so, I need to stop selling it to a lot of my clients and move other clients off of the product.  I don't recall this being an issue in the past, but now I have people complaining about activation issues with regularity. 

I thought the whole point of "downloading" Office to my computer vs. using Office Online was so I could use it when I am offline!  

Anyway, hope you all put some thought into this going forward.  Maybe it should work a little more like AD does.

Fix it?  Really?  It uninstalls the application and then you get to sit and stare at a downloader for another 3-4 hours.  This sucks!