Shared Computer Activation keeps asking to logon

Question

I have an issue with several users where the Shared Computer Activation doesn't seem to work. This is on a RDS server enviroment. 

• RDS is on Windows 2016
• All users have a Office 365 E3 subscription
• Not all users seem to be affected (but it happening on several RDS servers in our farm (7 servers)).
• Currently we are running Office 2016 version 1805
• Shared Computer Activation is activated correctly (shows up in about office product and the key is set in the registry).
• Office 365 logons are federated (UPN and emailadresses are the same). Windows logon works on the RDS servers.
• Group policy (machine) is set to save licencing tokens to %appdata%\Microsoftand to Use Shared computer activation
• Group policy (user) is set to Automatically activate Office with federated organization credentials. 
  • (enabled the /adfs/services/trust/13/windowstransport endpoint per https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_install-mso\_winother-mso\_o365b/office-2016-auto-activation-with-adfs-2016/8d18ec3d-0d53-4016-8c30-5e9bcd6ba70a)

Users have the following issue, every time they start an Office product the Office Activation Wizard start asking them to sign on. This happens almost every time they start an Office product even when not logging off and on the RDS server (so during the same logon session on the RDS server). 

I see the license token files being created correctly. For example this is from a users that just logged on to the RDS server and opened Outlook and then Excel. Both programs showed the Activation Wizard asking to logon. The user only has to provide their email address the rest (logging on) works seamlessly using SSO. After starting Outlook and then Excel 2 authstring.txt files exists: 

• authstring.txt.previous.txt 2018-06-29T13:12:22.1130000Z_2018-07-29T13:12:22.1130000Z
• authstring.txt 2018-06-29T13:34:46.7090000Z_2018-07-29T13:34:46.7090000Z

The tokens seem to be valid for a month, still every time a login is requested by Office. 

I have tried to reset the Office 365 activation as described in this article https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/odsupport/2015/05/01/how-to-reset-an-office-365-install-to-the-initial-activationinstall-state/ that does not work however.

Answer 1

Hi Stefan,

We haven't heard from you for a while, please feel free to post back if you have tried the steps above.

Regards,

Tisky

I have tried activating office with an non federated user. That worked. After logging off the non federated user and logging on in Office with the federated user it worked. And it looks like it keeps working.

Answer 2

I will have to try that, I will come back if I have more info. Thanks!

Answer 3

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for the log files in private message.

For the further investigation, we need to confirm whether the problem only affect the federated users. You can create several users in Admin center, then check the result.

Regards,

Tisky

Answer 4

I have sended you the logs.

Answer 5

Hi StefanU,

To investigate the issue, we’d like to collect some logs from your side. For the detailed steps, I have sent you a private message. You can access it via https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/privatemessage/inbox

Thanks,

Ran