Unable to log out from old school account and use my personal lifetime license

Gerald 0

I recently purchased a lifetime license named "Office Home & Business 2021 for Mac". OneNote was included in the installation associated with this license, meaning my license should provide access to OneNote.

All Microsoft products on my computer was previously signed into my school account including OneNote. When I open OneNote, my school account is not signed in technically (only my personal account appears in the window where you select which account to use). However, all notes from school account remain and are available for edits after I signed back into the school account that I am not longer using. I was unable sign out of it because it doesn't show in the window for account selection, nor was I able to use OneNote with my personal account even though OneNote is detecting it.

I would need further help on this. Please help. Thank you.

Screenshot attached for better illustration: Screenshot 2025-01-29 at 22.11.19

1 answer

Jiajing Hua-MFST 14,015 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-30T06:46:40.4766667+00:00

Hi @Gerald

I suggest you close and quit all Office apps.

Go to the Finder> Applications> Utilities> Keychain Access> Remove the Identities related to Microsoft Office.

Then download and run the license removal tool.

Reopen OneNote, sign your personal Microsoft account for a check.

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Gerald 0 Reputation points

2025-01-30T11:29:56.1933333+00:00

Thank you for the answer, JiaJing Hua. It sounds like the license removal tool will remove my lifetime license from my Macbook. After this step, would I be able to reinstall all the office apps using the lifetime license? Would the license still be valid to re-install all the apps on this same device? Thank you.

Jiajing Hua-MFST 14,015 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2025-01-31T09:53:14.3466667+00:00

Hi @Gerald

Thanks for your back.

After this step, would I be able to reinstall all the office apps using the lifetime license?

Yes, to re-install it, you may follow the steps in: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/download-install-or-reinstall-microsoft-365-office-2024-or-office-2021-on-a-pc-or-mac-4414eaaf-0478-48be-9c42-23adc4716658

But please note, after step, the Office still exists on your Mac, it is inactivated. You may try to sign in the licensed account, check whether this issue persists.

If yes, then you may uninstall it and re-install it.

Would the license still be valid to re-install all the apps on this same device?

As long as your Office 2021 license is bound to your Microsoft account, you can re-install and use it on one device (The device can be changed, but the number is only one).

Gerald 0 Reputation points

2025-01-31T22:52:42.1333333+00:00

Hi Jiajing, I wanted to report back. In short, it worked but with another method.

MacOS has moved Keychain to Passwords, but only things associated with the university I could delete were just the account and password on microsoftonline.com, which didn't help as expected. The license removal tool essentially signed me out of all Microsoft apps. Upon re-signing in, problem persisted.

What worked was to go into other Microsoft apps to check whether any of them was signed in with my university account. In my case, the school account was on PowerPoint, where I was able to sign out. Right after, OneNote prompted that my notes will be deleted. I confirmed and signed in with my personal account, and all is well now. It's weird that I need to sign out from PowerPoint to prompt the sign-out on OneNote, and also weird that only PowerPoint was signed into my university account but not Word, Excel, Teams, or Outlook.

Thank you.
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Unable to log out from old school account and use my personal lifetime license

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