How to solve This copy of Microsoft Office cannot be used

If you are using Office 365 on your Citrix Apps and Desktop workloads, you have probably run into this error. It says, “This copy of Microsoft Office cannot be used on a computer running terminal services.” I have seen this error even though I have used Office Deployment Tool and created a configuration.xml file for the roll-out.

The Solution to This copy of Microsoft Office cannot be used on a computer running terminal services

The reason why you get this error is that you are missing a key in registry.

Go to this path in registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun
\Configuration

And add the following key:

SharedComputerLicensing: value 1

You need to do this on each VDA or in your image.

Once that is done, you need to set policy as well. For that, you need the latest Administrative Template Files for Microsoft Office. If you do not already have them, you can download here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030.

When the Administrative Template Files are implemented, create a new policy. Navigate to this path in the policy editor.

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine)\Licensing Settings.

Enable the policy named “Use named computer activation”.

Link the policy to an OU so it will apply to the VDAs. After that, you need to reboot your VDA’s so the policy will apply.