This app can't open Office app error on Windows 11/10

Many users are facing problems opening the Office app on Windows 11/10. Apps like the Word app or several other UWP apps, when launched, either didn’t open or displayed an error This app can’t open, Check the Windows Store for more info.

This app can’t open Office app error

Microsoft has identified the cause and provided a workaround for This app can’t open error.

What caused the issue

The issue was related to the Store Licensing Service. Preview Apps were given a license that timed out far too quickly. This gave rise to another issue where the Store fails to acquire a new license if one already existed, even if the license had expired. Removing and reinstalling doesn’t clear the cache so the app fails to get the license at startup. If you had installed the app prior to Feb. 23 then you would hit this issue and removing and reinstalling the app won’t fix the problem.

Workaround

Microsoft’s Andrew Moss explaining the issue has posted the workaround in the Microsoft’s Community. It’s a workaround till a fix is made available. What this workaround does is, it purges all licenses cached on the device, and allow a refresh of all valid licenses. After you do this workaround you will need to remove Word Preview, PowerPoint Preview and Excel Preview and re-acquire them from the Store (and other Apps if they are also showing the same symptoms). You need to rebuild the Tokens.dat or Activation Tokens file.

Here are the step-by-step instructions

1. Open Notepad and paste the following text into the blank doc

echo off
net stop clipsvc
if "%1"=="" (
 echo ==== BACKING UP LOCAL LICENSES
 move %windir%\serviceprofiles\localservice\appdata\local\microsoft\clipsvc\tokens.dat %windir%\serviceprofiles\localservice\appdata\local\microsoft\clipsvc\tokens.bak
 )
if "%1"=="recover" (
 echo ==== RECOVERING LICENSES FROM BACKUP
 copy %windir%\serviceprofiles\localservice\appdata\local\microsoft\clipsvc\tokens.bak %windir%\serviceprofiles\localservice\appdata\local\microsoft\clipsvc\tokens.dat
 )
net start clipsvc

2. Save the file with some name as “activelic.bat” (note the .bat extension)

3. Right-click the Start button (window logo), open ‘Command Prompt (Admin)’. Execute the batch file from this admin command prompt.

4. Go to the Start menu and uninstall the App exhibiting the behavior.

5. Go to the Gray Store and reacquire the App. Launch it and it should now open, reacquire a new, valid, license.

What script is doing is stopping the client license service (which may not be running) renaming the cache and restarting it again. The cache will update as apps are launched.

It worked perfectly for me. I was having an issue with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps. After running the script, uninstalling, and reinstalling they are working fine.

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