"Your account doesn't allow editing on a mac. To learn more, contact your Admin about your office plan."

Question

I have an Office 365 account through a student email address and a Mac with up-to-date software. Recently Microsoft Word has been crashing a lot, but other than that working ok.

Today it crashed and when I reopened it I got a ribbon that said "Your account doesn't allow editing on a mac. To learn more, contact your Admin about your office plan."

I've never had this problem before, and now all my documents open as read-only. What happened and how do I fix it??

Answer 1

Hi Adina,

Please first follow the steps below to check that you have been assigned the right Office license:

1.       Log in to Office 365 portal (portal.office.com)

2.       Settings>Office 365>subscriptions

3.       Under Licenses section, make sure you have been assigned the “The latest desktop version of Office”.

If you have been assigned the right license, please follow the steps below to see if the issue can be fixed:

1.       Make sure you are connecting to the Internet.

2.       Sign out account and Quit Office apps.

3.       Go to the Library folder and open Group Containers. Ctrl+click each of these folders if present, and Move to Trash.

UBF8T346G9.ms

UBF8T346G9.Office

UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost

4.       Restart Office then sign in with your account.

Thanks,

Rena

Answer 2

Hello! 

I followed all the steps that you indicated, but it didn't solve the problem. As soon as I open Word again, those folders that I deleted appear again. I also emptied the trash bin, but that didn't help either. Do you have any other suggestions? Thank you very much for your help. 

Luciana

Answer 3

Check to see if you are signed in. If not Office will only allow you to view and print. 

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Answer 4

Hi Adina,

Have you tried any suggestions above?

Thanks,

Rena

Answer 5

Once you are signed in, I would also fix the crashing...

Frequent crashes are normally caused by bullets, numbering, or tables that have been hacked or chopped around.

Chances are, the bit that is bad is the bit you were working in when it crashed. To cure it, either select the entire list and remove then re-apply the bullets or numbering, or convert the table to text and then re-convert it back to a table.

Of course, your file format needs to be .docx -- the obsolete .doc format can't cope with a modern document; don't use it.

Hope this helps