I ran in to this issue where Outlook 2016 for OSX said it required to be activated. Very annoying as I don’t have a 365 account and that is what it requires before you can use it. It seems that this problem was caused by the fact that I used an older version of the preview/beta in the past. It can simply be solved be taking the following steps:
- Open Terminal
- Type: defaults delete com.microsoft.Outlook
- Type: killall cfprefsd
- Exit the Terminal session and launch Outlook
This basically deletes all the current settings for Outlook and wipes the cache. Now you can enter your details again and it will all work as expected.
Thanks, this helped me!
Thank you! Finally my issue with activation is also solved! 🙂
Nice job! and thank you.
Life saver
Worked for me then outlook crashed. Had to start over again.
Every-time i quit and restart i need to do it again.
I should note that i have outlook 2011 installed as well, but don’t run it anymore.
hi
Any Time quitting cause the activation problem
How to make it as an automator
Excellent! Thank you for providing this easy fix.
Thanks!
Thanks for this Duncan, our whole office got affected by this issue. I dont believe it matters about downloading preview before or not, as I have installed Outlook for Mac on brand new machines and ran into the same error.
Hi Duncan, i followed your tips but it doesn’t seem to work for me. I don’t get any hints to relaunch outlook, any idea why? My outlook still asking to activate, my MAC is new and i haven’t installed any older version before but only the 2016, wouldn’t wanna pay to subscribe office 365:-) thanks
Did not work at all for me either, running Yosemite on 2008 Macbook Pro??
Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for.