Office 2016 on Windows 7, 10 or Windows 2012 and 2016 – No Internet connection to sign-in users to Office 365

We had a strange issue on our hosted environment on Azure with Windows 7, 10, Windows 2012 R2 and Windows 2016 RDS / Citrix servers. Users could not sign in to Office Pro with their Office 365 user credentials, to a batch of newly installed servers. They received the message when they start any of the Office applications (in the screenshots below I use Word):

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

 

We are unable to connect right now - Office 2016The next message users receive is:

UNLICENSED PRODUCT Most features are turned off because a shared computer license isn’t available.

Unlicensed product - Office 2016

As the message states: most features are turned off ๐Ÿ™‚

Shared Computer Licensing on RDS

We have installed Office 2016 with a Shared Computer License model as stated by Microsoft, to enable Office for multiple users simultaneously.

Our configuration.xml file does what it supposed to do, install Office silently, US and NL languages enabled and of course Shared licensing enabled:

<Configuration>

  <Add OfficeClientEdition="32" Channel="Monthly">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
      <Language ID="nl-nl" />	
    </Product>
    <Product ID="VisioProRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
      <Language ID="nl-nl" />	
    </Product>
  </Add>

  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="True" /> 
  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1" />

</Configuration>

So this is not really spectacular and after installation of Office I have confirmed we have the Shared Computer Licensing activated (you can check this via Word – File – Account – About Word):

Shared Computer Activation Office 2016

The solution

Well, in a nutshell, I have tried a lot… and found an issue under Network and Sharing center, I saw the message The service to detect this status is disabled.

Network and Sharing center the service to detect this status is disabled

When clicking the More information… you receive the following message: Do you want to turn on Network List Service. Well yes, turn it on, please…

Do you want to turn on Network List Service

So pressing the Turn this on button I received the following error message: The dependency service or group failed to start.

The dependency service or group failed to start.

Ok, let’s start the Services MMC (WindowsKey + R, services.msc and OK).

Services overview with Network List Service selected

Let’s open the Network List Service and look at the Depedencies. We see two dependent services if you look at the above screenshot you can see that the Network Location Awareness service is disabled! Now open the Network Location Awareness service and set the startup properties to Automatic. After pressing OK, start the Network List Service.

Dependencies of the Network List Service

Now start Word and you can successfully connect to Office 365!

That’s all for today.

Regards,

Daniel Nikolic

27 replies
  1. Vikalp
    Vikalp says:

    Many thanks Daniel Nikolic. It was very helpful. Have been struggling for several weeks with this issue but you blog did it all.

    Reply
  2. Miguel
    Miguel says:

    I can’t “like” this post enough, wow. So many suggestions out there on the internet that are completely useless. Thank you for your hard work and for sharing your solution… OneNote works like a charm now.

    Reply
  3. Tim
    Tim says:

    Thank you, Daniel! This helped me too, and I’m very grateful to you for it. From my research while trying to solve this problem, it looks to me like you are the only one who posted the solution.

    For anyone who’s curious, I have Office 2016 in Windows 7.

    Reply
  4. Steven Halbert
    Steven Halbert says:

    For some reason I very rarely post on these sorts of things, but this problem has been plaguing me for several days . . . but I’ve been limping along. Today I started trying to resolve in earnest. My entire Office Suite was then made “unlicensed.” Your solution worked for me, and I am very grateful. Back up and running now! Thanks!

    Reply
  5. Seema
    Seema says:

    Many Thanks Daniel.
    I was struggling quite hard to fix this issue and Finally your post brought new year smile ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  6. Vishal Thakur
    Vishal Thakur says:

    Ohhh man I never comment on posts however you made me to do so. It worked like a charm however problem was created by me only I had disabled the windows event log service for some reason before and due to which this service was not coming up ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  7. Carl Burke
    Carl Burke says:

    This was exactly the fix I needed. Somehow this morning Office decided I had no internet connection, and it was because that service shut off silently. Didn’t even have any failed dependencies, it was just a transient failure.Thank you!

    Reply
  8. Mark Anderson
    Mark Anderson says:

    Thank you. This worked for me, although I did not need to follow the complete solution, I only had to go as far as turning on the Network List Service. This is a well-written and useful solution and I hope you leave it online for other users.

    Reply
  9. anonymous
    anonymous says:

    Thank you very much. I literally tried all solutions on the internet but it had not worked at all.
    Finally I found your post and it works smoothly.

    Reply
  10. Frank
    Frank says:

    I got my head twisted troubleshooting this issue, and you saved me from twisting my head further.

    Thanks a lot. Great job.

    Reply
  11. MikeL
    MikeL says:

    So pleased to have found your blog. We were about to halt our whole Office 365 rollout after trying all night and all day in vain to fix this problem.

    Thank You

    Reply

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