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Credentials don't work for IRM-protected content

• 3 contributors
• Applies to: Microsoft 365

When you try to open an Information Rights Management (IRM)-protected document, workbook, email message, or other item, you discover that you don't have access to the item even though you correctly signed in to Microsoft Office. Additionally, you're prompted to sign in, but you still can't access the content when you should be able to access to it.

This symptom is usually that you are prompted to sign in but your credentials don't work.

This behavior occurs when the following conditions are true:

• Your environment is configured for cross-domain authentication.
• The domain where the content is created is configured to have Conditional Access requirements.
• The authentication fails.

For example, [email protected] protects content and sends it to [email protected] . To access the protected content, [email protected] has to authenticate to contoso.com to obtain the key to decrypt the content. If contoso.com has Conditional Access requirements, this authentication may fail.

Most Conditional Access challenges require that the user is provisioned in the resource tenant ( contoso.com ). If the guest user ( [email protected] ) is explicitly invited and the invitation is redeemed, [email protected] is provisioned in the resource tenant contoso.com . If the user is a pass-through user, the Conditional Access validation code servicing contoso.com doesn't have a way to satisfy the challenges, and so the request fails. This is expected and secure behavior. For many cases, this behavior causes the Office client code to prompt for sign-in so that the user can supply credentials to open the file because authentication failed.

For more information about Conditional Access policies, see the following blog:

Conditional Access policies for Azure Information Protection

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Word Top Contributors: Stefan Blom  -  Charles Kenyon  -  Suzanne S. Barnhill  -  Bob Jones AKA: CyberTaz  -  Doug Robbins - MVP Office Apps & Services (Word)  ✅

November 12, 2024

Word Top Contributors:

Stefan Blom  -  Charles Kenyon  -  Suzanne S. Barnhill  -  Bob Jones AKA: CyberTaz  -  Doug Robbins - MVP Office Apps & Services (Word)  ✅

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Word documents with IRM enabled suddenly don't recognise approved users

Early last year a group of staff here started using the information rights management tools in Word (e.g. File -> Info -> Protect Document -> Restrict Access -> Restricted Access with named users then added) to protect documents held on an on-prem DFS share. Each time a new rota was needed they would copy and paste the previous version, retaining the protections.

We’re 365 users (only A3), but we use no rights management, classification/policies or anything like that in place both on- and off-prem. We've confirmed that the files involved have never been near Sharepoint or OneDrive.

Suddenly (between last Thursday and Monday) they now can’t access any of these files. People previously able to access them the following error:

“You are not signed in to Office with an account that has permission to open this document. You may sign in a new account that has permission or request permission from USER@DOMAIN” with options to Add Account, Request Permission, Cancel.

The user contact mentioned in the error is among those who now can’t open the files.

Clicking Add Account opens a typical 365 login Window – behaviour here varies, sometimes being able to successfully login but just get sent back to the error message, or sometimes it doesn’t even ask for a password/MFA and just bounces the user back to the error.

We’ve tried multiple combos of users/devices/file locations to find a way in, and increasingly desperate attempts to get around the rights management without success (reassuringly?)

As it coincided with the window for applying July's patches we’re currently wondering if there has been a change to something in Windows or 365 that we’ve missed, but we're a small team and lack the capacity and expertise to grok the firehose of information that comes out about such things.

If anyone could suggest further lines of inquiry, I’d be very grateful!

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Replies (1) 

• Microsoft Agent |

Dear Gareth Edwards,

Greetings! Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

Per your description, your users cannot access Word documents that are IRM enabled and they get error message. We appreciate you share with us the detailed information and troubleshooting steps you tried.

For the situation you encountered, we do understand the inconvenience caused and apologize for it.

Considering that this issue happens suddenly, and you have tried multiple combos of users/devices/file locations to find a way in but without success, in this situation, we're afraid this issue may need to be investigated and fixed from back end. The best way to troubleshoot this issue further is to report it to the related team, because the support team has higher permission to remotely assist you, collect background logs when the error message appears, help you find root cause and fix the issue from back end. They have more resource to help you, this would be the most efficient way in handing this case for you.

Therefore, we sincerely recommend you use Microsoft 365 admin permission, follow steps in this article Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn , raise a support ticket and contact Microsoft related team.

Appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation.

Hope you stay safe and healthy.

Tina | Microsoft Community Moderator

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