How to fix “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac” in Office 365 (2023)

If you are a regular Office 365 user, you might already know that MS Office is prone to a wide variety of errors. Sometimes applications like Excel, Word fail to respond altogether, other times you may encounter annoying error messages like “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac”. 

When this pop-up appears on your screen, it means you simply can’t edit your documents and all your files will open as read-only. So, why does this happen and what can you do to fix the problem? Read on activate office to create and edit Mac errors.

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Possible Reasons To Get “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac” Error

If you are facing the frustrating ‘Editing not allowed’ problem on Mac while using Office Applications, the issue might lie with: 

• Microsoft is not able to recognize your Office 365 License. 
• Office Applications fail to detect if they are activated. 
• There are some corrupt files on your Mac. 

These are three major reasons for receiving the activate Office to create and edit Mac error. But don’t worry, we’ll share the step-by-step method to get rid of the issue.

How to fix “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac” (2023)

Before proceeding with any of the workarounds shared below, make sure you have the correct license and “use another account” to log back into your account.

METHOD 1 – Verify Your Office 365 License

To recheck your Office 365 License, all you have to do is: 

STEP 1 – Open the Office 365 Login Page on any of your favorite browsers.

STEP 2 – Now login to your account and click on the profile at the top-right corner of the screen that appears on the Office 365 portal. 

STEP 3 – Next you need to click on ‘My Microsoft Account’ from the left-hand side panel. 

STEP 4 – At this point, you need to hit on the Subscriptions option. Now, you can check the details of your Office License in the dedicated Licenses section under the name ‘latest desktop version’. 

If you don’t find it, you need to get in touch with the Admin to have the right license for operating Office 365 Applications again. But if your screen displays ‘latest desktop version’, here’s what you need to do:

• Simply sign out of your Office 365 account. 
• Open the Library folder and locate Group Containers. 
• You need to find the following files and delete them if found: 
• UBF8T346G9.ms
• UBF8T346G9.Office
• UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost

Once it’s done, you can securely login into your Office 365 account and check whether you can work without any annoying errors or not. Probably, you’ll be able to get rid of the “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac” issue.

METHOD 2 – Activate Office 365

Oftentimes, Office applications fail to detect whether they are activated or not. This further results in ‘Editing Errors’ and sometimes random crashes while you are working on them. To ensure you are using activated Office 365, all you have to do is: 

STEP 1 – Launch MS Word or any other Office application on your Mac. 

STEP 2 – Navigate to the What’s new window and hit the Get Started button. 

STEP 3 – Now sign in to your Office account and let the activation complete. 

Once done, try using these apps again to check if the “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac” is resolved. 

METHOD 3 – Get Rid of Useless Digital Clutter – Caches, Logs & Other Junk

We highly recommend removing potential junk files and other accumulated residues from your Mac. As that might be the real culprit for interfering with your MS Office applications. Over time, these files hog storage space and make your hard disk a complete mess, resulting in slow & sluggish performance. So, if you are searching for how to fix your account that doesn’t allow editing on a Mac, try this one.

Cleanup My System’s ‘One-Click Care’ module helps users to identify and eliminate all the unwanted junk, old/large files & other residuals in a few clicks. You can learn more about the cleaning and optimization utility in this review article!  Just get the app from the Mac App Store or the download button given below and install it on your Mac. Launch the application and click on the Start Scan button under the One-Click Care to optimize Mac.

You Might Want To Read: How to Customize Your Mac and Make it Appear the Way you Want? 

METHOD 4 – Reinstall Office 365

If none of the workarounds shared above helped you to fix “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac ”, the last resort is to reinstall Office 365. Doing so will help you to eliminate all the corruption errors that lie within MS Office’s components. Hence, reinstalling the suite will probably help you to eradicate the error once and for all. 

STEP 1 – To start the uninstallation process, navigate to the Applications folder. 

STEP 2 – Select MS Excel and hold down the Command key to select apps like PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook. 

STEP 3 – Now simply drag all of them to the Trash and complete the uninstallation process. Alternatively, you can read our comprehensive guide How to Easily Uninstall Microsoft Office on your Mac?  to have a better understanding. 

STEP 4 – Once done, you need to navigate to the website www.office.com. Here, you have to sign in with the account associated with Office 365. 

STEP 5 – After successful sign-up, you need to select the option Install Office. 

STEP 6 – Simply follow the on-screen instructions and go to the Downloads folder. Double-click on the Microsoft Office installer.pkg file (or with a similar name). 

STEP 7 – From the installation window, hit the Continue button to begin the process! 

Now you can activate the Office 365 suite, just like we did in Method 2. Hopefully the frustrating error “Your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac” will be resolved by now and you can use the applications like before! 

Must-Read: How To Delete Apps On Mac That Won’t Delete? 

METHOD 5 – Reset MS Office To The Default State

Well, another effective solution that may fix the ‘account settings’ error is to reset the app. Usually, apps like MS Office Suite don’t have a dedicated reset functionality. However, by following the manual tricks below you can revert to the default settings.

STEP 1 – The first step is to close down MS Word, along with all other Office apps. You may choose to Force Quit to ensure they’re fully shut down.

STEP 2 – Open Finder and hold the Option key on your keyboard. Further, you need to click on the Go button and then go to the Library. You will see the list of files/folders that power your Mac. By removing the Word file, you can revert to the default settings.

STEP 3 – Locate the Group Containers folder, open it, and find UBF8T346G9.Office file. Next, head towards the User Content > Templates > Normal.dotm. Drag the last file to your Desktop folder and go back to the ‘Library’ window.

STEP 4 – At this step, open the Preferences sub-folder and locate files:

• microsoft.Office.plist
• microsoft.Word.plist

Simply drag these two files to the Desktop folder as well. Now, when you re-open the Word app, these files will be replaced instantly and you’ve successfully reset the MS Word to default settings.

Conclusion

Sometimes the cluttered space on a device can cause unexpected problems and such errors appear. Another reason for activating Office to create and edit Mac errors could be a temporary glitch. Therefore, we suggest you follow the above methods to help yourself. 

We hope this article on how to fix your account doesn’t allow editing on a Mac helped you. Do you know any other workarounds to fix the Office 365 Can’t Edit On Mac problem? We would like to know your views on this post to make it more useful. Your suggestions and comments are welcome in the comment section below. Share the information with your friends and others by sharing the article on social media.

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