can't reconnect to connected experiences

Question

I turned off my connected experiences and now I can't reconnect. I get the following screen when I go into Privacy and click the Manage Connected Experience button. But nothing I do allows me to re-check the boxes:

What should I do?

Answer 1

Exit the dialog, Quit the program, be sure no other Office programs are running then try again to restore the checks. Reply with your results & be sure to include the present Version Number & type of License for your Office software. Both are available in Word> About Microsoft Word in the main menu bar.

Answer 2

On Mac, the ability to (re)enable connected experiences can be controlled by the organization’s admin. When that happens, the checkboxes in the Connected Experiences dialog appear grayed out or cannot be changed by the user.

To proceed:

1. Confirm whether the device/account is managed by an organization (work or school account, MDM, or configuration profile). If so, the admin may have set a policy that disables optional/connected experiences.
2. If the device is managed, contact the organization’s administrator and ask them to allow optional/connected experiences for the account. User-side settings cannot override an admin policy.
3. If the device is not managed and this is a personal Microsoft 365 subscription, open any Office app on Mac and go to:
   • App menu (Word, Excel, etc.) > Preferences > Privacy.
   • In Account Privacy, verify that the options for connected or optional connected experiences are available. When enabled, the services described there can be used; when disabled, they are not accessible.
4. If the options remain unavailable even on an unmanaged personal device, sign out of Office apps, restart the Mac, and sign back in. If the issue persists, it is likely still governed by a policy tied to the account, which must be changed by the admin.

Note that even when connected experiences are turned off, essential services such as licensing and basic Outlook/OneNote syncing continue to function and cannot be disabled.

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References:

• Overview of optional connected experiences in Office
• Connected experiences in Microsoft 365
• Connected experiences in Office