Fix: We Couldn’t Contact the Server Error 0x80072EFD in Microsoft Office

How to Fix We Couldn’t Contact the Server Error 0x80072EFD in Microsoft Office, It is known that Microsoft Office activation error 0x80072EFD appears in Office 365, Office 2016, and other versions of the program, with the message “We cannot contact the server”.

Fix We Couldn’t Contact the Server Error 0x80072EFD

As mentioned above, Microsoft Office activation error 0x80072EFD usually displays as “We could not contact the server. Please try again in a few minutes.”

In some cases, Microsoft Office will be disabled after Windows is updated, and opening a Microsoft Office file will cause an error message to be displayed, displaying “Unlicensed Product”, “Product has been disabled”, or sorry, something went wrong, please wait Try again later.

This issue may also occur if you try to activate Office 365 on a computer that previously installed an older version of Microsoft Office.

Therefore, let us continue to study some known methods to fix Microsoft Office activation errors on Windows computers.

Run Office as an administrator

Due to permission issues, Microsoft Office may not be activated on your computer. To solve this problem, just try to run any Microsoft Office program (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) as an administrator.

Type Name of the Microsoft Office program in Search bar > right-click on the Office Program in search results and click on Run as Administrator option. On the confirmation pop-up, click on Yes to Run the problematic Microsoft Office Program as Admin.

Fix the date and time on the computer

If the date and time on the computer are not set correctly, Microsoft Office activation may fail.

Right-click on Time & Date icon located in the taskbar and click on Adjust date/time option in the menu that appears. If Time & Date Icon is missing on your computer, click on Start > Settings > Time & Language. On the next screen, make sure that your Time Zone is correct and the date and time as displayed is correct.

Refresh DNS and update IP address

The problem may be due to a network connection problem.

Open Command Prompt as Admin > type: ipconfig /release and press the enter key. This will release the current IP Address of your computer. Next, type: ipconfig /flushdns and press the enter key > type: ipconfig /renew and press the enter key to renew the IP Address of your computer.

Close the command prompt window, and then try to activate Microsoft Office on the computer.

Check Microsoft Office subscription

Open any web browser on your computer and go to the Office 365 portal. Log in to your Microsoft account using the email address and password linked to the subscription.

Make sure that a valid Microsoft Office subscription is assigned or available in your user account.

Repair Microsoft Office

The problem that Microsoft Office cannot be activated on your computer may be related to program file corruption.

Open Control Panel > switch to “Large icons” view and click on Program and Features. On the next screen, right-click on Microsoft Office and click on the Repair option in the contextual menu. After the repair process is complete, restart the computer and check if the Microsoft Office Activation error still occurs on the computer.

Disable proxy server

If you are using a proxy server (VPN), the Microsoft Office activation error may be caused by a proxy connection configuration error or the Microsoft website cannot connect to your proxy server.

To confirm, disable the proxy server, and then see if you can activate Microsoft Office.

Go to Settings > Network and Internet > select the Proxy tab in the left pane. In the right pane, disable the Automatically detect settings option, located under the ‘Automatic Proxy Setup’ section. On the same screen, scroll down and disable the “Use a proxy server” option under the manual proxy section.

Temporarily disable antivirus programs

Sometimes, the anti-virus program installed on your computer may eventually block the Microsoft website, resulting in a Microsoft Office activation error.

To confirm, temporarily disable the antivirus program on your computer, and then see if this helps to resolve the Microsoft Office activation error on your computer.

Right-click on the Antivirus Program icon in the system tray and click on Disable Auto-Protect. Next, select the time period up to which you want to disable the Antivirus program and click on OK.

Uninstall and reinstall

Microsoft Office Uninstalling and reinstalling Microsoft Office is another way to help some users fix Microsoft Office activation errors.

Open Control Panel > switch to Large Icons view and click on Program and Features. On the next screen, right-click on Microsoft Office and click on Uninstall.

After uninstalling Microsoft Office, restart the computer, and then reinstall the Microsoft Office program on the computer.

Hope to Fix: We Couldn’t Contact the Server Error 0x80072EFD in Microsoft Office !

More: Are you having errors downloading files on Chrome? Please refer to the article on How to fix Download Failed (Insufficient Permissions Error) in Chrome.

Sharing is caring!