MS365 Personal. Connected experiences is enabled in O365 and Windows but not in Office apps

Question

MS365 Personal. Connected experiences is enabled in O365 and Windows but not in Office apps

Justine Heazlewood 0

I have a 365 Personal account. Win 11 OS on a Surface Pro. I disabled connected experiences and then started experiencing issues with syncing to OneDrive from OneNote. I have tried to re-enable connected experiences and have successfully done so in both O365 (via web login) and Windows. But when I open an Office app (e.g. Word), and look in the trust centre, the connected experiences are greyed out and I cannot select them.

The only info I can find online about this mentions that these options may be disabled by my work or school administrator. But this in not a work/school account and I am the administrator. Even if I run an Office app as an administrator the trust center options are still greyed out.

I am at a loss. The only thing I can think to do is to reset this machine to factory and re-install and set up everything.

Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-01T08:08:23.6566667+00:00

I have now tried repairing Office 365 a number of times and it has not helped. Everytime I open and Office app it tells me I need to restart to update the privacy settings and then when I do that, the connected experiences options are greyed out. Would it be pulling the settings from somewhere else? Something in the registry?
Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-01T08:53:20.6933333+00:00

I have uninstalled Office 365 completely including OneNote and Outlook. I have re-installed it and it is still the same. When I try to access the Help function I get a dialogue box saying "Your organisation's administrator turned off the service required to use this feature". See screenshot. Is there an admin area I can access as a personal user? This is very frustrating.
Norah-L 4,970 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-02T02:59:52.4466667+00:00

Hi Justine!

At the moment, I haven’t found any other solutions that address this behavior. I’ll take some more time to research further and see if there are any other possible approaches. I’ll share any updates here as soon as I find something.

In the meantime, since this is an open forum, let’s also see if other members may have ideas or suggestions.

Thank you very much for your patience.

Best regards.

2 answers

Your answer

Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-01T08:08:23.6566667+00:00

I have now tried repairing Office 365 a number of times and it has not helped. Everytime I open and Office app it tells me I need to restart to update the privacy settings and then when I do that, the connected experiences options are greyed out. Would it be pulling the settings from somewhere else? Something in the registry?
Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-01T08:53:20.6933333+00:00

I have uninstalled Office 365 completely including OneNote and Outlook. I have re-installed it and it is still the same. When I try to access the Help function I get a dialogue box saying "Your organisation's administrator turned off the service required to use this feature". See screenshot. Is there an admin area I can access as a personal user? This is very frustrating.
Norah-L 4,970 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-02T02:59:52.4466667+00:00

Hi Justine!

At the moment, I haven’t found any other solutions that address this behavior. I’ll take some more time to research further and see if there are any other possible approaches. I’ll share any updates here as soon as I find something.

In the meantime, since this is an open forum, let’s also see if other members may have ideas or suggestions.

Thank you very much for your patience.

Best regards.

Answer 1

Norah-L 4,970 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Welcome Justine Heazlewood!

Based on what you described, you originally disabled “Connected experiences” in Office apps and then lost OneNote sync to OneDrive. You then re‑enabled connected experiences in the Microsoft 365 web portal and in Windows settings. However, in the Office desktop apps (such as Word), the Connected experiences options in Trust Center remain greyed out.

Since connected experiences can be enabled on the web but remain unavailable in the desktop apps, this may point to a desktop app–level behavior rather than an account or policy restriction.

Please kindly try these steps:

In any Office app: File > Account and make sure you’re signed in only with your personal Microsoft account (no work/school accounts connected).
In Windows: go to Settings > Accounts > Access work or school and disconnect any old work/school connections (if present).

If repair + full reinstall didn’t change it, that’s another clue the setting is being enforced outside of the Office install. A practical next test is creating a new Windows user profile and installing/signing in fresh there to see if the greyed-out behavior is tied to the current profile

You can also try reaching out to Microsoft Support for further insight from the support agent as well.

Thank you for your understanding

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Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-01T07:30:28.2+00:00

Thanks for the answer but unfortunately this does not work for me. As I noted in my original question I am using a Win OS.
Norah-L 4,970 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-02T02:55:11.8733333+00:00

I'm so sorry about that! I’ve added a follow‑up in the comments, please check it out!
Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-08T01:08:47.05+00:00

Thanks for your input Norah. It appears to have resolved itself! I left it for 24 hours and when I logged back in the option to turn on connected experiences was not greyed out in MS Word. Perhaps some permission or change needed time to propagate into the right spot?
Norah-L 4,970 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-08T07:25:32.88+00:00

Hi Justine! Thanks for the update.

Yes, in some cases permissions or policy changes can take time to propagate fully. Glad it’s working as expected now.

Answer 2

For a Microsoft 365 Personal subscription, connected experiences are controlled from within the Office apps themselves, not from the Windows or web account settings. When connected experiences are turned off at the app level, features such as online Help, training, and some OneDrive/OneNote-related cloud functions can stop working.

To re-enable them for a personal (non‑work/school) account:

Open any Office desktop app (for example, Word).
Go to File > Account (in Outlook, File > Office Account).
Select Account Privacy > Manage Settings.
Under Connected experiences, turn the categories back on (for example, experiences that download online content and experiences that analyze your content).

If the connected experiences options are still greyed out in Trust Center but this is a personal account, use the Account Privacy path above rather than Trust Center. For Microsoft 365 Personal, the user controls these settings directly; there is no organization admin policy involved.

If connected experiences are turned off using the global switch that disables other connected features (such as document co-authoring and online file storage), re-enable that switch in the same Manage Settings dialog. Note that even when connected experiences are off, some essential services (including licensing and certain sync services) continue to run, but optional cloud features (including some Help and training content) will be unavailable until re-enabled.

If the settings remain unavailable after changing them in Manage Settings, repair or reinstalling Office on the device can clear a corrupted configuration and restore the controls, as reported in similar cases.

References:

Justine Heazlewood 0 Reputation points

2026-04-01T07:02:58.76+00:00

Unfortunately this solution does not work for me. In the Manage Settings area of Word connected experiences are still greyed out and cannot be turned on

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MS365 Personal. Connected experiences is enabled in O365 and Windows but not in Office apps

2 answers

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