Microsoft Upholds Ban on LibreOffice Developer Account

A recent study examining LibreOffice reignited long-standing concerns about Microsoft’s use of complex, proprietary file formats—a practice critics argue is intended to lock users into Microsoft Office and hinder the growth of open-source alternatives like LibreOffice.

These tensions escalated last Monday when LibreOffice developer Mike Kaganski found himself abruptly banned from Microsoft’s services, allegedly for violating the company’s Services Agreement—though the specific nature of the violation remains vague.

According to Kaganski, the issue began when he attempted to send a routine technical email to the LibreOffice developer mailing list using Thunderbird. The email failed to send, returning an error. Upon retrying, Kaganski discovered that his Microsoft account had been disabled, cutting him off from all associated services.

Since it was certain that nothing in the letter violated Microsoft’s terms of service, it was assumed that a bot or something was flagging his account and correspondence.

Mike made the decision to appeal, which led him to later refer to Redmond as “miserably incompetent in IT.” He entered his phone number when the automated system requested it, but a “Try another method” error message appeared instead.

The issue was that no alternative approach was provided. After that, he made the decision to contact Microsoft support directly. After some research, he discovered a button requesting that he “Sign in to Contact support” along with a link to contact the team.

Everyone might think, “Hold up, how’s he supposed to sign in to contact support when his problem is that he can’t sign in in the first place?” According to Mike, Yes, it is an assumption which should be true. This site is where we talk about issues with logging in. The thought to try the FAQ recommendations? Are you still unable to log in? No issue! Get in touch with our support staff, and we’ll take care of any issue in a moment! However, in order to proceed, please sign in first.

Finally, he received a response from support and was able to file an appeal using his wife’s account. He had already tried the instructions, which instructed him to visit the sign-in page and enter a phone number when prompted that the account was restricted. His thorough report of the malfunctioning procedure was disregarded by Microsoft, who closed his ticket after marking it as resolved without taking any further action.

His account has not yet been restored. When he was able to access Gmail later, the email he was attempting to send went through without any issues. Here is the link to the email, in which everyone can read the entire email if anyone is interested in determining whether it breaches Microsoft’s services agreement.

Mike’s account has been frozen recently, and it doesn’t appear that there is a method to get it back. Another user who happened to be a Reddit user ‘u/deus03690’ also revealed on the 17th of June 2025 that Microsoft had frozen their account, which had 30 years’ worth of “irreplaceable photos and work” on OneDrive, among other things.

Like Mike’s, their attractiveness hasn’t worked out yet. Microsoft contacted the user ten days later, requesting that they complete a recovery form and promised to assist them “every step of the way,” but the customer claims that they have not heard from the firm since.

This trick could work if anyone can try to have his or her account restored by appealing the decision at Microsoft Digital Safety to Appeal if anyone thinks Microsoft has suspended it incorrectly.

Your request and our policies will be reviewed. We might use the email address you gave us to request more details. Within about 14 days of submitting your appeal, you ought to be notified of the outcome.