Problems transferring from Office 365 to Office 2024 Lifetime

Question

I cancelled my Office 365 subscription and purchased Office 2024 Lifetime for Mac in January 2026. Every time that I install the software, it wants me to activate Office 365. In researching this, there is a problem with Macs whereas Office 365 seems to take over, even though it's cancelled. The suggestion was that you download your product to a Microsoft account that does not have Office 365. I purchase the software through Amazon, and already downloaded it to my Microsoft account, which has all of my purchases. How do I get around this problem? I've been trying to troubleshoot this for a month and a half, and really need access to the Office 2024 that I purchased. All of my documents are "read only". I am currently running on this latest MacOS Tahoe 26.3 on my computer.

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your question. I understand how incredibly frustrating it is to cancel Microsoft 365, install Office 2024 Lifetime for Mac, and still be forced to activate a subscription you no longer use. It makes sense to feel stuck when Office continues to open in read‑only mode after weeks of troubleshooting.

This issue usually happens because macOS keeps cached Microsoft 365 license files and activation tokens that override the new perpetual‑license installation. Even though your Microsoft 365 subscription is cancelled, the system still detects the leftover subscription data and assumes it should continue using the Microsoft 365 activation path. To resolve this, you need to completely remove all Microsoft 365 license files from your Mac, sign out of all Microsoft accounts in Office, uninstall all existing Office apps, and then reinstall Office 2024 using the product key tied to your Amazon purchase.

To guide you more precisely, when you open Word or Excel on your Mac, does the activation screen show your cancelled Microsoft 365 account, or does it fail before giving you any sign‑in option? This detail helps determine whether the issue is tied to cached credentials or a license file conflict.

Feel free to follow up with what the activation screen shows, and I’ll walk you step‑by‑step through the process to fully clear the old license and activate your Office 2024 Lifetime product successfully.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Best Regards,

Noel