Computing: Computer Basics

Home and Office: Help feature not accessible in Microsoft Office!?


If you use some Microsoft Office application, such as Word, Excel or Outlook, and want to access online help, pushing the blue Help button in the Help tab, it might happen, that you get the following (really weird) message: Your organisation's administrator turned off the service required to use this feature.

MS Office online help turned of by 'organisation administrator'

How can a private user have an organisation administrator, who is this one and why did he block access to the help feature? Found out these last days, that every Windows user (private or really member of some organisation) does have such an admin and that his name is Mr Microsoft. The reason, why access to online help is blocked, are your actual privacy settings.

In order to make help available, choose Options and in the Options tab and click the Privacy button. Scroll down to the end of the window and check Enable connected experiences in the All connected experiences paragraph. Then also check Let Office download online content in the Experiences that download online content paragraph. You'll have to restart Office, and when retrying help, it works!

Changing MS Office privacy settings to enable online help

Forcing Office users to turn off privacy in order to be able to view product help... I don't know, how you call this. I would say, that pervert is not strong enough, and that the term entirely sick is lots more appropriate. Just think of the impossible situation of this man, who posted in a forum, concerning this issue: A lawyer, using Outlook for his job related e-mails... Microsoft should at least show a minimum of respect towards those, who make them rich!



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