Intermittent “policy_enforced – Due to organizational policies, you can’t access these resources from this network location” error when creating new Word/Excel documents in Office Online

Question

We are experiencing an issue where some users receive the following error when creating a new Word or Excel document directly in Office Online:

"error":"policy_enforced","error_description":"Due to organizational policies, you can't access these resources from this network location."

Important: This error only occurs when using:

Word Online → New or Excel Online → New

And it does not occur when users create a document via:

OneDrive → New → Word/Excel or SharePoint → New → Word/Excel

This is a key indicator that the issue is not related to network policies, IP allowlists, Conditional Access, or tenant configuration, but specifically to the Office Web Apps ‘new document’ creation endpoint.

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Scope of the Issue

• It affects some users, not all.
• It occurs from different networks and IP addresses, including users on corporate wired connections.
• Some users behind the same firewall, same IP, and same VPN setup can create documents without issues.
• There have been no recent changes in our Conditional Access policies, SharePoint/OneDrive access control settings, or IP location restrictions.
• Our network team confirms no blocked traffic, no abnormal logs, and no policy enforcement on the IPs affected.

What we have already tested

• Verified external IP ranges → no discrepancy
• Verified Conditional Access → no recent changes
• Verified SharePoint “Access control → Network location” → no blocks
• Tested on wired corporate network, WiFi, and VPN (GlobalProtect)
• No relevant firewall, proxy, or VPN logs indicating blocked connections
• No recent tenant policy updates

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Request

We would like to know:

1. Is Microsoft currently experiencing a backend issue affecting the Office Web Apps ‘new document’ creation endpoint?
2. Is there a known incident or internal service health notification related to this behavior?
3. Are other tenants affected by the same inconsistent “policy_enforced” errors when creating a new document via Word/Excel Online?
4. Is there a recommended workaround or forced re-sync for the WAC policy evaluation engine?

Any confirmation or guidance from Microsoft would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The fix is rolling out: OO1230836

Final status: We reviewed the authentication flow and logs for file creation and identified a recent change intended to improve the authentication process for file creation that contained a code issue. We reverted the change and confirmed with representatives of your organization that the impact was remediated.

Root cause: A recent change intended to improve the authentication process for file creation contained a code issue that caused failures. Next steps: - We're reviewing our code change approval processes to develop better methods for identifying and preventing similar issues in the future. This is the final update for the event.

Answer 2

Several people are reporting this here.

Please see the detailed response from Demi M.

Your are corresponding, here, with your fellow users, not with anyone who can speak for Microsoft.

If you want to be alerted to new posts here, click on

just under the original question.

Answer 3

Hello @Megens, B.(Medewerker Helpdesk ICT),

Thank you very much for the detailed information you shared and for the time and effort you’ve put into troubleshooting this issue. I really appreciate how thoroughly you documented the behavior and the steps you’ve already taken, as it helps me understand the situation much more clearly.

At this time, I have not identified any officially reported incident or advisory related to this behavior in the Microsoft Service Health dashboard. Based on the symptoms and the scope you described, this issue would require deeper investigation at the backend service level.

To proceed further, I recommend raising a support ticket through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. This will allow a support agent to access specialized diagnostic tools and review tenant-level information, which is necessary to analyze backend dependencies and request flows in more detail. Unfortunately, from my current position, I don’t have access to those tools or visibility into your tenant, so I'm limited in how far I can investigate this directly.

Please follow the detailed steps below to reach out to Support agent: 

• Sign into the Microsoft Admin Center 
• After clicking on "Help & Support" button like this image, you can type "I need agent support via phone or email". After that, you can click on "Contact support" 
• Choose contact method: "Phone" 
• Fill all the information in this contact support details, please describe your situation carefully so they will have enough information to help you. 
• Finally, clicking on "Contact me" 

After completing them, you will receive an email appointment for a meeting to review this issue professionally together. 

Creating a ticket via the Admin Center will ensure the case is handled by the appropriate team with the right level of access to continue the investigation effectively.

Thank you again for your cooperation and for the effort you’ve already invested. Please let me know if you need any guidance on creating the support request.

Kind regards,

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Answer 4

We are also seeing the issue on our end as well. All timeframes others have reported on here line up with when it started and continues to happen. I opened a ticket with Microsoft Support, and I am still waiting to hear back about this. I understand that their queues are busy due to the volume of issues they're having, we really need someone to investigate this on Microsoft's side and provide an update.

Answer 5

I am seeing the same issue, North America Tenant, since February 5th or 6th it was first reported. I can confirm we've also followed similar if not the same troubleshooting steps as the OP. @Megens, B.(Medewerker Helpdesk ICT) Can you please share your Microsoft Ticket number so I can add it to my support ticket as well?

Thank you!