You have a legal license. You pay Microsoft every month. Yet, every time you open Excel, you get a giant yellow bar:
“GET GENUINE OFFICE. There is a problem with your license.”
This is a known bug where the Microsoft “connected experience” service thinks you are pirating software, even when you aren’t. It often happens if you had a cracked version of Office installed years ago, or if your OEM laptop came with a trial key that is conflicting with your new key.
Here is how to surgically remove the banner using the Registry.
The Registry key
- Close all Office Apps.
- Open Regedit.
- Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration - Modify (or create) these entries:
- AudienceData: Delete the value (leave it empty).
- AudienceId: Delete the value.
Disable “Connected Experiences”
Sometimes the banner is pushed via the “Experimentation” service (Feature Flighting).
1. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs
2. Delete the entire ExperimentConfigs folder (Right-click > Delete).
* Don’t worry, Office will recreate this compliant defaults on next launch.
The “OlicenseCleanup” Method
If the registry edits don’t stick (the banner comes back after restart), you have a conflicting key. You shouldn’t try to find it manually.
- Download the OLicenseCleanup.vbs script from Microsoft (or copy the standardized VBS script code).
- Run it as Administrator.
- It scrubs all licenses from the machine.
- Open Word. It will ask you to Sign In.
- Sign in with your paid account. This pulls a fresh, “Genuine” token from the server, replacing the confusing local files.
Summary
The “Get Genuine” banner is actually a web-element served by Microsoft. By clearing the ExperimentConfigs and Identity cache in the registry, you force Outlook/Excel to re-download the “config” for your UI, which usually clears the false-positive flag.