​Microsoft is investigating and working to resolve a known issue that prevents customers from downloading Microsoft 365 desktop apps from the Microsoft 365 homepage.

As detailed in a Wednesday incident report (OP1192004) seen by BleepingComputer, this bug has been impacting users since November 2nd, causing Office Client issues for affected customers.

Microsoft has already developed and is now testing a fix to address the issue and added that it will provide an update on progress by 6:30 PM UTC later today.

While it noted that the bug may affect any user who attempts to download Microsoft 365 desktop apps, it has not yet provided more details on the extent of the problem.

However, when it acknowledged the issue this morning, Microsoft tagged it as an incident, a designation used for critical service issues that usually involve noticeable user impact.

"Our analysis of the components of Microsoft 365 infrastructure, as well as recently deployed changes, identified that a recent service update containing a code issue is impacting the license check process, leading to users being unable to download Microsoft 365 desktop apps from the homepage," Microsoft said.

"We're continuing to validate and test the aforementioned fix in our internal environment to ensure its efficacy prior to deploying it to the affected infrastructure and we expect to provide an estimated deployment time line by our next scheduled update."

Microsoft is also working to resolve a known issue that blocks some users from opening Excel email attachments in the new Outlook client due to an encoding error in Excel file names.

One year ago, Microsoft addressed another known issue triggered by licensing changes that caused random "Product Deactivated" errors for customers using Microsoft 365 Office apps, while last month, it resolved a bug caused by misconfigured authentication components that prevented customers from installing the Microsoft 365 desktop apps on Windows devices.