Two weeks ago, we brought to light an issue with Office Touch Preview, a suite of apps released by Microsoft to the Windows Store for Windows 10 Technical Preview users. You can read about the issue here — basically, the apps would not launch, showcasing an error that says “This app can’t open.”
The same issue occurs with various other apps and typically a solution would be to uninstall the app and then reinstall the app. Unfortunately, this method does not work with the Office Touch apps. Fortunately, the issue has been pinpointed and it has to do with the Windows Store Licensing Service.
In a post on the official Microsoft support forums, we have learned that this issue stems from the Windows Store failing to acquire a new license for the apps.
“There was an issue with the Store Licensing Service which meant that the Preview Apps were given a license that timed out far too quickly. This was fixed on 2/23. Unfortunately, this exposed another issue whereby the Store would fail to acquire a new license if one already existed – regardless of whether the license had expired. Removing an app and installing again doesn’t clear the cache, so even if you do this the app still fails to acquire a new license on startup. So basically if you installed the app prior to 2/23 then you would hit this issue and removing and reinstalling the app won’t fix the problem.”
Thankfully, there is a manual workaround that you can execute to fix this issue right now. Follow the steps below to fix the issue.
- Open Notepad.
- Paste the following text into the blank document:
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
- Save the file (somewhere easy to find) as “license.bat” (Note the .bat extension).
- Execute the batch file from an administrator privileged command prompt. (You can right click the Start button and select Command Prompt (Admin)).
- Go to the Start menu and uninstall the app exhibiting the behavior.
- Go to the Windows Store and reacquire the app. Launch it and it should now open, reacquire a new and valid license.
This script basically stops the client license service, renames the cache, and restarts the service again. The cache will update as the apps are launched. Let us know in the comments below if this method fixes the issue.
Further reading: Apps, Microsoft, Office 2016, Windows 10, Windows Store
