MS Office – How to Log Out or Reset RMS/AIP Identity on Mac

document-managementencryptionms office

Microsoft 365 offers a RMS / Right Management Service called Azure Information Protection which is integrated with Outlook, Word, Excel. It encrypts documents of certain files, in a nutshell.

On a Windows computer switching between two accounts within Word is relatively easy, but switching the under-the-hood RMS/AIP account is harder. On Windows you launch the Azure Information Protection Unified Labeling Client and reset the logged-in account via that application (update :/).

On a Mac the integration in Office of AIP with Sensitivity Labels is similar to Windows; however, no AIP- unified (right-click) client exists at the moment of writing for Mac OS.

My question is: How do I log-out or reset the logged-in AIP user on a Mac?

It doesn't not matter what the logged-in account in Word is, that one is not necessarily linked to the account which logged is in AIP/RMS and fetches the appropriate Sensitivity labels and access rights.

Best Answer

After a too long search:

Go into the Mac's KeyChain and look for an Application Password called something like:

com.microsoft.office.rmscache

(Search for RMS.)

  • I deleted this record.
  • Quit Word.
  • Opened the protected file again.
  • Now I get the RMS/AIP login Window again and can user another account.

For the record, logging Word out normally or using Microsoft's remove-Office-license-from-Mac-pkg did not have the desired effect. Office's license account, Word's account (providing OneDrive etc.) and RMS/AIP's account are three separate entities.

In a simple world you have one account for all of them. In a more complicated set-up you can use the provided work-around to switch accounts.

(Fyi, an alternative: create an extra MacOS user account.)


Breadcrumbs I found:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/17214.ad-rms-information-resetting-the-office-2011-for-mac-irm-client.aspx

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/030bba52-551b-4f31-8394-589b00418e22/azure-information-protection-on-mac