Office 365 Solutions

When trying to activate (or sign in to) Microsoft Office with your Office 365 enterprise credentials, you may receive the following error. You may receive this error despite having internet access and being able to access other Office 365 resources.

We are unable to connect right now. Please check your network and try again later.

Alternatively, you may receive this error.

Sorry, we are having some temporary server issues.

These errors are due to the Office suite (M365 Apps) believing it has no connection to the internet. The Office suite uses Windows to determine if it is connected to the internet. If Windows does not believe it is connected to the internet, you may see an exclamation symbol in your system tray over the network connection icon. Selecting the network connection icon may indicate that the connection has ‘Limited Access’ or ‘No Internet.’

Are the connection URLs blocked?

Despite this error showing in Office, this is a Windows problem. Several things could make Windows think it has “Limited Internet” or “No Internet.” Some culprits could include a misconfigured VPN, a web proxy intercepting or blocking traffic incorrectly, or restricted location awareness settings.

To determine if this is a VPN or web proxy issue, see if you can navigate to the following URL – http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt. Windows 10 attempts to connect to this URL, retrieve the TXT file, and confirm its content. You can plug this URL into your web browser to see if you can access that file. You should see a response stating “Microsoft Connection Test.”

If you don’t get this response, or you get an error accessing this page, make sure that any web proxies or firewalls do not block msftconnecttest.com (over port 80) in your environment.

If this test is successful, Windows 10 then attempts to resolve dns.msftncsi.com via DNS lookup. Note that this URL will not return any response in a browser. But you should confirm a firewall or web proxy does not block this URL.

For more information on what URLs Windows 10 uses to check network connectivity, plus registry keys to confirm the NCSI probe has not been disabled, check this article: An Internet Explorer or Edge window opens when your computer connects to a corporate network or a public network

When trying to activate (or sign in to) Microsoft Office with your Office 365 enterprise credentials, you may receive the following error.

This feature has been disabled by your administrator.

This error is likely a result of a group policy.

To check this, open Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). From the GPMC, expand your domain name (e.g., skaro.local) and Group Policy Objects.

Select your policy that is managing the Office suite and click the Settings tab. Expand User Configuration (Enabled) > Policies > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Office 2016 > Miscellaneous. If you see a setting named Block signing into Office that is Enabled, this is the culprit.

Note: If you do not see this setting, I recommend checking all group policies currently applied to the impacted user. You can get this by running GPRESULT from a command prompt on your impacted user’s computer.

Starting November 1st, 2021, only Outlook 2013 SP1 (build 15.0.4971.1 and greater) will be able to connect to Microsoft 365 services. This means older Outlook 2013 builds, and Outlook 2010 and earlier will not connect to Microsoft 365. This new requirement goes hand in hand with the deprecation of basic auth, requiring Outlook 2013 SP1 (build 15.0.4753.1 and greater). Microsoft is deprecating basic auth on October 1st, 2022.

That said, if you are already blocking legacy auth for Outlook clients (or you are reading this post after October 1st, 2022), you may receive the following error when trying to sign in to your Office 365 account with Outlook 2013 or any other Office suite product. In addition, your Outlook 2013 client might not be able to connect to your Office 365 mailbox either.

When signing in to your Office 365 account via File > Office Account > Sign In from any Office suite product, you receive the following error.

Your account is in a bad state. Please sign-in to this account online to address the issue.

Alternatively, you may first see the error below which can then lead to the error above when you click the Fix me button.

Account Error: There are problems with your account. To fix them, please sign in again.