Good morning! Your Microsoft 365 Family license is broken • The Register

breaking 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. 

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.  

This is a developing story, check back for updates as we learn more.