"Account Notice" Appears in Office after Switching Office 365 Plans

account notice in office 365

Ashish Ratan Singh | Modified: May 3, 2017 | General, Office 365, Office Online | 4 Minutes Reading

Office 365 is a versatile collection of tools and service subscriptions that multiply overall productivity linked to software related services. It is an extensively used software. However, some users face issues when Account Notice appears in Office after switching Office 365 plans. In this article, we will discuss how to reactivate/troubleshoot Office 365 account notice.

Why Does the Account Notice Shows Up in Office 365

This kind of ‘Account Notice’ appears when users installed Office on their system as part of Office 365 for a business subscription but the company moves to another business subscription plan.

Scenarios When Account Notice Appears in Office 365

In a situation that is mentioned above, users will have to install an Office version, which comes with the new subscription plan. But if users delay the changing of the plan or the update then, they encounter various account notices. Some of these have been highlighted below in form of images.

  • Once a user is enrolled in the new plan, Office displays “Account Notice Your Office 365 subscription has a pending change” in every 1-3 days. This message reads as shown in the image below.
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  • If a user has not updated the Office version at that particular time, again an “Update Required Your Office 365 subscription has a pending change” message is displayed.
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Quick Glance At Solutions

Users can perform either of the two operations to resolve/stop account notice in Office 365, which are listed below.

  1. Update Office (in case user has Office 2016)
  2. Reinstall Office (in case user has Office 2013)

Account Notice Pops Up in Office 365: The Resolution

Methodologies For Different Office Versions – Depending upon the type of version of Office a user has, Office 365 Subscription plans differ. Sometimes it comes with Office 2013, other times with office 2016, and sometimes with both. Now one by one we will cover all the methods to resolve the account notices on different versions of Office.

  • For Office 2016: If the user opens Office 2016 and gets an account notice dialog box on the screen, just click on ‘Update’ and further click on ‘Sign-In’ if it is prompted. During this, old Office will be uninstalled and new Office will be updated on the user’s system.

    NOTE: If an Office 2016 user gets a ‘Sign-In’ option instead of ‘Update’ option in Account Notice dialog box then, follow the below procedure for Office 2013.

  • For Office 2013: It is recommended that the user should uninstall the old version and further install the new version, which comes with the new plan. The user can take a backup of documents before uninstalling for safety reasons. However, users can skip this ‘uninstalling’ step but then, both the old and new versions of Office will be present in the system. This sometimes might result in ‘Unlicensed Product Errors.’ Then, users will be prompted to uninstall Office 2016 if they try installing office 2013.

Follow these simple steps to resolve this issue:

  1. Go to Control Panel to uninstall Office.
  2. Now sign-in to Office 365 at the URL mentioned below in the image.
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  • For Unknown Office Users: If the users do not know which Office they are working on then, follow this procedure given below.

Open Word. Go to ‘File’ Menu and click on ‘Account’ then, see the version number just under Office Updates.

Please note these version numbers for various Office:

  1. Version 15 – is for Office 2013
  2. Version 16 – is for Office 2016

Why ‘Unlicensed Product Error’ Appears?

Office, after a certain interval, checks whether user’s Office installation is rightly licensed or not. This procedure is known as Activation.
Now if the activation is approved successfully then, users can go on to use Office features. But, in case this activation fails then, Office displays this common Unlicensed Product Error in Office 365.

Another reason can be when users do not install the version, which comes with the new Office 365 for a business plan. This is when this ‘Unlicensed Product’ will appear on the title bar of user’s screen. An image is shown below to let users know how this error appears on the title bar.

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Later on even the functionality mode will be reduced in Office and most of the buttons and features will also get disabled.
To prevent this from happening, install the new version as soon as possible to avoid these ‘Unlicensed Product Errors’ from appearing again.

Conclusion

This article is purely intended to make users aware of the causes of why the Account Notice appears in Office after switching Office 365 plans, possible solutions to implement Account Notice in Office 365 reactivation and ways to prevent Unlicensed Product Errors from reappearing in office 365. All the possible concerns have been discussed in this content to make the users aware of this issue.