MS Office activation

[Bogdan T]

I understand that "MS Office activation" issue is widely known which has the "Remember choice" workaround in case of PDF Editor.

A similar bug is with PDF Tools and it has a slightly worse outcome.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to Options > Preferences > Shell Menu

2. "User interface mode" select "Show progress only"

3. "Show tool report" select "When error occurred"

4. Convert a Microsoft Word document to PDF via Shell Menu

Basically what I want is just to show a progress bar and when an issue occurs, then I want to see it to troubleshoot it.

Because of the MS Office activation false positive, I always get the Tool Report showing errors, each time I use a tool via Shell Menu.

I installed PDF X-Change Pro on 4 machines until now. All of them have the "Microsoft 365 Business Standard" subscription.

All of them have this issue.

Because in our business we convert PDFs a lot using certain settings offered by PDF Tools and Shell Menu, It gets annoying especially for my colleagues which always get this warning.

If I suppress the "Show tool report" then this is even worse, since I will never get notified if a real error occurs.

I attach herein a screenshot with the error.

Kind regards,

Bogdan

PDF Tools MS Office activation.png

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Bogdan T

Thank you for the report. This is caused by the MS Office installation improperly reporting its license status to external apps - but you are correct that it seems we do not offer a bypass option in PDF-Tools, unless it appears as part of your error message there (sadly I have never been able to reproduce the issue - as my office installation is working properly...). Are there any other dialogues that appear for you when this message is shown? Perhaps an option appears when double clicking or right clicking on the warning line in tools?

If you can include a screenshot of anything else you see, perhaps there is something else we can spot to get around this.

In the meantime, I have already raised the issue with the Dev team, and am simply awaiting a reply from them regarding a workaround or proper solution to the issue. I will let you know as soon as I have heard back from them.

Kind regards,

[Bogdan T]

Dear Daniel,

Please find attached:
1. a video reproducing the issue
2. the input file
3. the output file
4. the Tool Run Report.txt
5. the PDF Tools Options Preferences Shell Menu screenshot

Hope the above, especially the video, answers your questions.

Kind regards,

MS office activation issue PDF Tools.zip

[Bogdan T]

Further to the above, I revert with the output of the MS Office license here:

Code: Select all

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16> ./vnextdiag.ps1 -action list

========== Mode per ProductReleaseId ==========
o365businessretail = vNext

========== Shared Computer Licensing ==========
No registry keys found.

========== vNext licenses found ==========
{
  "Version": "5",
  "Type": "User|Subscription",
  "Product": "O365BusinessRetail",
  "Acid": "[redacted]",
  "Email": null,
  "LicenseState": "Licensed",
  "EntitlementStatus": "Provisioned",
  "EntitlementExpiration": null,
  "ReasonCode": null,
  "NotBefore": "2026-03-26T16:24:45.6357626Z",
  "NotAfter": "2026-06-25T16:24:45.6357626Z",
  "NextRenewal": "2026-03-26T16:24:45.6357626Z",
  "TenantId": "d91e8e85-[redacted]-3114aae32f3f",
  "LicenseId": "EWW_[redacted]d7d2ddf841c1"
}

========== Device licenses found ==========
No licenses found.

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16> reg query "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Licensing\LicensingNext"

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Licensing\LicensingNext
    o365businessretail    REG_DWORD    0x2
    InstalledGraceKey     REG_DWORD    0x1
    MigrationToV5Done     REG_DWORD    0x1

From what I understand, my machines' MS Office subscriptions use the newer vNext activation model, not the old OSPP model.

This can be deduced from the LicenseId starting with "EWW_" and a value of "2" under LicensingNext.

Maybe this helps.

Kind regards,

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Bogdan T

Thank you for the additional information, I have included this in my report to the dev team, and will get back to you as soon as I hear more.

Kind regards,