M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

License to freak out? El Reg reader recommends reverting to pen, paper, pub

Final update Readers have flooded our mailboxes with reports that Microsoft 365 Family licensing has fallen over this morning, so those of you who provide tech support to relatives or those using the office suite for a small business, consider yourself warned.

Microsoft's Service Health page says a "licensing issue" is causing users with Family subscriptions to be unable to open their Office suite. Problems started around 1100 UTC this morning, with fully paid up and licensed shared users seeing the message "Your subscription expired," while others say they are seeing the message "your subscription has been canceled." 

The issue appears to be affecting "shared" users on the account rather than the "main" user. The locked out users are asked by Microsoft to "renew your subscription" even though they are fully paid up for the coming months or year.

The Register tips its hat to Reader Mark Allen, who told us he spent an hour with a small business client using Microsoft 365 Family only to find that, despite the family account she was using showing she's listed as a valid member, the user was still unable to access Office. 

Allen told us a similar story to what had been reported elsewhere on Reddit and Microsoft's support forum, namely that users who should have a current, active subscription are being told they don't.

"Main user is fine but the shared users are not and showing as expired, said one Microsoft support forum member. "Microsoft are putting up their renewal costs and hope they compensate users for what I can see is a system error.

"I have been on a web chat and waiting for hours to get to the front of the queue. Not acceptable!!!!!!!!!"

Removal and re-adding the user didn't work for Allen, though others have reported re-inviting works for a couple of hours before tossing an error again. 

"After spending an hour on this another member of the same family calls [having] the same problem. He has also been kicked out," Allen explained. "I recommend reverting to pen and paper and work from the pub." 

Another reader wailed: "Re-adding doesn't work, just says unlicensed, can't edit files etc!"

We've asked Microsoft for an explanation, and a timeline for restoration, but didn't immediately hear back. ® 

Updated to add at 1400 UTC

Microsoft updated its status to say it was "reviewing service telemetry and recent changes within the service to isolate the source of the issue." "Some" users are still locked out.

Updated to add at 1630 UTC

While we have yet to hear from Microsoft with an explanation, the Azure giant has updated its outage page to indicate it's identified a "recent change" that may be behind the matter, and is working to revert it. Still no word on when a fix is expected.

Updated to add at 1725 UTC

Microsoft said service has begun to be restored for some users, as it is now working on reverting whatever change caused the breakdown.

"We're continuing to revert the change to fully restore functionality and some users have reported remediation," the IT giant said on its outage page. "For users still experiencing impact, we recommend that you refresh the browser or restart the application to update client-side caching and provide relief sooner."

Final update at 2030 UTC

Microsoft reports it has reverted the change that broke its stuff, and refreshed server-side caching, so everyone should be good.

"We’ve confirmed through telemetry that impact was successfully remediated," Microsoft said.

"Users should refresh their browser or restart the application to ensure the client-side caches are updated."

Redmond didn't get specific in its explanation of what caused the outage, but did note it was caused by a recent change that led to license information populating incorrectly.

"To help prevent similar impact in the future, we're further reviewing our testing and validation processes prior to deployment," Microsoft said, suggesting it does have a testing department of some kind still.