Enable Active Sharing for Office 365 Apps

To use shared computer activation, you need an Office 365 (or Microsoft 365) plan that includes Microsoft 365 Apps and also supports shared computer activation. Shared computer activation is available for the following plans:

• Any plan that includes Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (previously named Office 365 Plus). For example, Office 365 E3 or Microsoft 365 E5.
• Any plan that includes the desktop version of Project or Visio. For example, Project Plan 3 or Visio Plan 2.
• The Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan, which includes Microsoft 365 Apps for business.

 Note

• The Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan is the only business plan that includes support for shared computer activation. There are other business plans, such as Microsoft 365 Business Standard, that include Microsoft 365 Apps for business, but, those business plans don't include support for shared computer activation.
• Shared computer activation is available for Education plans that include Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. For example, Office 365 A3 or Microsoft 365 A5.
• Shared computer activation isn't available for Office for Mac.

Make sure you assign each user a license for Microsoft 365 Apps and that users log on to the shared computer with their own user account.

If you want to enable shared computer activation during the initial installation of Microsoft 365 Apps, you can instruct the Office Deployment Tool to do so during installation.

• When you are using the Office Customization Tool at config.office.com or the wizard built into Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, make sure that you enable the option Shared Computer in the Product activation section.
• When you are crafting the configuration file manually, make sure to include the following line:
  XMLCopy

   

  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1" />
  

If Microsoft 365 Apps is already installed and you want to enable shared computer activation, there are three options to choose from. A re-installation is not required. The device must be rebooted in order to apply the change.

• Use Group Policy by downloading the most current Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) for Office and enabling the "Use shared computer activation" policy setting. This policy setting is found under Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine)\Licensing Settings.

• Use Registry Editor to add a String value (Reg_SZ) of SharedComputerLicensing with a setting of 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration.

• Download and run the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant. This is required to change the activation method from subscription mode to shared mode.

   Note

  Microsoft 365 Apps for business doesn't support the use of Group Policy, so you'll need to use another method to enable shared computer activation. If a user already activated the Microsoft 365 Apps before shared computer activation was enabled, you have to reset the activation to allow shared computer activation to work.

After Microsoft 365 Apps is installed, you can verify that shared computer activation is enabled on that computer.

Lastly, Go to Admin Center > Billing > Licenses > Microsoft 365 Business Premium > type in username > Click on the username > checkbox 'Office Shared Computer Activation' > Save.