Word add-in menu won't load, stuck spinning indefinitely

Question

As of about a month ago some people in my organization started having issues loading their Word add-in menu. After clicking it, the loading spinner would just spin indefinitely, and never load.

We did a deep dive into this and discovered the problem. I've opened a support case with Microsoft to report it, but also wanted to post this publicly since there is a workaround.

Note that this only applies to users that have activated Word with an organizational license. Individual retail licenses are not affected.

If you inspect network requests on the system when opening the add-in menu, you'll find an authentication failure with the message "AADSTS500014: The service principal for resource 'https://teams.microsoft.com' is disabled. This indicate that a subscription within the tenant has lapsed, or that the administrator for this tenant has disabled the application, preventing tokens from being issued for it."

After trial and error, I discovered that it is necessary to enable the "Microsoft Teams Services" application in Azure settings. This will then allow members of the organization to open the add-in menu.

To fix it:

• Go to https://admin.microsoft.com/#/homepage as an organization admin
• Click "show all" on the lefthand navbar
• Click Azure under "Admin centers"
• In the Azure portal, search for "Enterprise applications" and go to it
• Clear the filters, search for "Microsoft Teams Services," and select it
• Under "Manage" on the left, go to "Properties"
• Toggle "Enabled for users to sign-in" to "Yes"
• Click "save"

This may take several minutes to propagate.

This was not previously necessary, our organization does not use teams. It doesn't make sense that enabling teams applications is now necessary to use Microsoft Office

Answer 1

The issue you're experiencing with the Word add-in menu not loading and getting stuck on a spinning loader can be related to authentication failures, particularly if the service principal for Microsoft Teams Services is disabled. This can happen if the subscription within the tenant has lapsed or if the administrator has disabled the application, which prevents tokens from being issued.

To resolve this issue, you can enable the "Microsoft Teams Services" application in the Azure settings. Here are the steps to do that:

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center as an organization admin.
2. Click "Show all" on the left-hand navbar.
3. Click Azure under "Admin centers."
4. In the Azure portal, search for "Enterprise applications" and go to it.
5. Clear any filters, search for "Microsoft Teams Services," and select it.
6. Under "Manage" on the left, go to "Properties."
7. Toggle "Enabled for users to sign-in" to "Yes."
8. Click "Save."

Please note that it may take several minutes for these changes to propagate. This step may not have been necessary previously, but it seems to be required now for users with organizational licenses to access the add-in menu in Word.