Last Thursday wasn’t great for Microsoft 365 Family customers who were kicked out of their legitimate Office apps because of a bug in Microsoft licensing servers. We’ll explain when happened over nine hours and what you can do if it happens again.
It’s become an all too familiar story. A Microsoft update of their cloud service is buggy and causes problems for their paying customers.
This time an Azure update caused Microsoft 365 Family customers to be refused access to their Office apps because Microsoft’s systems said they were ‘Unlicenced’.
The bug seems to have affected people sharing a Family plan, not the plan owner. They received false messages saying their Microsoft 365 license has either ‘expired’ or ‘cancelled’.
It took Microsoft about nine hours to firstly admit there was a problem then fix it (10 April 2025 between 11am and 8:30pm UTC).
What to do if your Microsoft 365 software stops working?
If this happens again, there’s always an alternative to let you keep working.
The browser based versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint don’t rely on Microsoft 365 so they are always available.
Any files on your computer can be uploaded to OneDrive, for editing in the web apps.
Go to https://office.com and login to your Microsoft account. After login you’ll be redirected to a ‘cloud.microsoft’ domain name which is OK because the whole .microsoft is managed by the company. Many options are offered, depending on what Microsoft is trying to push.
Click on the ‘nine dots’ icon at top-left to see the web apps available including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
For email, use the web page version of the mailbox. Most, if not all, mailboxes have a web version. Make sure you have browser favorites setup for all your mailboxes.
Microsoft cloud services move to a new domain for a good reason
