How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Office

1. How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Office
2. How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Office Software
3. Troubleshoot Microsoft Office 365
4. Microsoft Office 2016 Install Problems

2020-12-21 14:30:10 • Filed to: macOS 10.15 • Proven solutions

Microsoft's Office products are so ubiquitous that they've even invaded Apple's macOS environment. However, after you buy Microsoft Office for macOS 10.15 and start using it, you may run across various issues. Most of these are easily addressable, and this article shows you how to fix issues with the Office suite for macOS 10.15 - officially known as Catalina - that Apple will drop to all Apple desktop and laptop users on 23 September 2019.

How to Troubleshoot macOS 10.15 Office Issues

Once you download Microsoft Office for macOS 10.15, currently in public beta, you might notice a few issues that other macOS users have reported. The issues might continue even with the public release version of Catalina, so it will help if you know the most common issues seen in Office for macOS 10.15 and how to fix them. Since Microsoft products don't usually play nice with iOS or macOS devices, there are quite a few of them. The top ones are listed here, along with fixes.

1. Application Slow or Crashes Regularly

Troubleshoot installing Office. The issues you encounter when trying to install Office 365, or Office 2019, 2016 or 2013 and how you fix them depends on whether your product is part of an Office for home or Office for business plan. In this guide, we will discuss the specified versions of Office, errors, and troubleshooting, along with in-depth steps for activation. How to Troubleshoot Activation Errors. Before we get started on the activation step process, let's address the troubleshoot activation errors. Office Activation Error.

One of the most frustrating things with any desktop application is that it runs slow, posing a significant hurdle to anyone looking to get their job done quickly. Even worse is a piece of software crashing on you; in such cases, losing unsaved work is a major problem. Here are some ways to fix these issues:

Fix #1: Update your Microsoft Office macOS 10.15 Product Key - If your product is not officially licensed, you may find that it runs slower than it should even though your RAM isn't under any strain from other resource-intensive processes. The obvious fix here is to get a product key to activate your copy of Office. There are several websites that offer generic, master, or OEM product keys that don't have a one-machine-one-license restriction. You can get one of those to activate your product, and see if the issue persists. If it does, move to the next fix.

In a Microsoft Office Access 2003 database, corruption in your database may occur for a number of reasons. This article contains a list of references that may help you to resolve corruption in your database. Troubleshooting and preventing database corruption. Activation Issues. If the office install is saying that there is a problem just now, then you can: Click Start. Then All Programs. Select Microsoft Office, then right-click on any of the titles seen. Select Run as Admin, then Continue and this should allow the activation to complete. Close Word and any other Office programs. You should do so now; otherwise, you'll be asked to do.

Fix #2: Upgrade your Microsoft Office Software - If you're running MS Word 2016 for Mac, you might have this same issue cropping up again and again. The icon in the dock will keep bouncing up and down but clicking on it doesn't seem to launch the application properly. Most often you'll need to do a Force Quit by right-clicking on the Word icon and then relaunching it. Instead of doing that all the time, consider upgrading to a higher version of MS Office 2016. The issue is common in version 16.11, but even applying a minor update to version 16.11.1 should do the trick. Oddly enough, this issue is generally seen exclusively with Word 2016 rather than Excel or PowerPoint.

2. Documents Saved in the Wrong Format

Some users have reported that documents that are saved in PDF format sometimes show up as .DOCX files. This typically happens when you're saving documents to a cloud service, specifically, OneDrive, Microsoft's own cloud storage service. There's no permanent fix, unfortunately, but there's a workaround that will fix the problem for a particular file.

Fix #1: Fix #1: Rename, Save Locally, Then Save to Cloud - The way to circumvent this problem is to go into OneDrive, change the .docx file extension to .pdf, then switch the location to be saved as local. After that, you need to change it again to OneDrive, which usually fixes the issue.

3. Excel Issues: Format or Extension Not Valid

One of the more frustrating issues with Microsoft Excel for Mac is the problem with permissions. Protected files usually request that you grant permission before they can be opened. This is usually in the form of what is called the Open or User password. The issue with macOS 10.15 Office (Excel only) is that it will ask you for permission even if you didn't set a password, and then the system either freezes or alerts you that the .xlsx file extension is not valid or is the wrong format. Basically, Excel tells you that its own files are of the wrong type!

Fix #1: Delete a Library File - Microsoft doesn't have a fix for this yet, but they suggest a workaround. The first thing is to Force Quit Excel and then delete a specific file from your library. The file path is ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences, which you can access using the Go To function in the Finder menu. Once there, delete the file called com.microsoft.Excel.securebookmarks.plist by right-clicking and moving to Trash. Relaunch Excel, and the problem should have gone away temporarily. You may need to do it each time you face the issue until Microsoft releases a permanent fix.

4. Font Problems in Office 2016 Version 16.9 for macOS 10.15

There's a weird issue that occurs in this specific version of Office 2016 for Mac. What happens is that your fonts get all messed up. At times one font will appear as another, or looks like garbled text, or certain fonts might even be missing from the drop-down list. The problem is that you may have multiple copies of the same font loaded in your Mac, which causes errors with the Font Picker in Office. Here's the fix.

How to install google drive. Fix #1: Set Active Copy for Fonts - First, open the Font Book app on your Mac. This can be found in the Applications folder in Finder. You can also search for and select it using Spotlight. Once it's open, choose the All Fonts option in the left sidebar menu and click the information icon, which is a lower case letter 'i'. If you know which font is causing the issue, click and expand it in the center panel. Make sure that only the latest versions are set to On. However, first, turn every version to On, and then where you see the warning message on the right-side panel, click on Resolve Manually and pick the most recent version. This is what is known as the Active Copy. Close Font Book, go back to the Office application where you first faced the issue, and see if it's resolved.

The Best PDF Editor for Mac to Complement Office for macOS 10.15 Catalina

The Office suite is incomplete if you don't have a robust PDF editor. Since Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are generally saved as PDF for easy portability and sharing, you'll need something like PDFelement to round out the experience. This is a powerful piece of software that costs a fraction of what you would pay for the same features in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. It contains all the features typically used in an office environment, such as signing PDF contracts and agreements, filling or creating forms, redacting confidential information when sharing internal documents with outsiders, securing and encrypting PDF documents, and much more.

As a matter of fact, the matches Adobe Acrobat's product feature for feature, providing users with editing, annotation, page management, merging, and other essential tools to increase your productivity and speed up the workflow in your office. Although Word does have some basic PDF functionality, it can only convert from Word to PDF. On the other hand, PDFelement is a dedicated PDF management software that offers bulk conversions from and to multiple other formats, OCR (optical character recognition), data extraction from scanned forms and documents, and other essential capabilities. If you have macOS systems in your workplace and have opted for Microsoft Office for Mac, then PDFelement is an equally essential productivity tool.

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

The first thing you should do is learn about your normal.dot file in Word. This makes Word ever so much easier to understand and helps you to resolve problems so much more quickly. Please read About Normal.dot in Microsoft Word. It'll only take a couple minutes. Then come back here to take the troubleshooting steps.

Some people may tell you to do a system restore. Though it may very well work, I feel that it's a pretty drastic measure to take to fix Word. That doesn't mean it's not necessary, but you won't likely hear it from someone who knows Word. We have no idea how much or how often you use your computer, or what you've done recently that we'd be undoing by advising a system restore.

Many will tell you to start Word using StartRun and type: winword.exe /a or to start Word in 'safe mode'. That really only lets you know that Word will run once the problem is taken care of. Use the steps below to get right to the source of the problem. More about Word Command-Line switches, which you might find interesting, can be found here.

If Word opens files fine, but you can't launch Word with the icon, the shortcut could be bad. Just find winword.exe and create a new shortcut.

Windows 2000 Update

Apparently, there's a known issue about the Windows 2000 Update (when combined, I believe, with Word 2003) that makes Word crash when saving to a floppy drive (which you shouldn't do anyway, see this article). The only fix I'm aware of at this time is to uninstall the update.

Norton AntiVirus

If you are running Norton AntiVirus, then you may first want to check the Microsoft TechNet support article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329820/.

Adobe Acrobat

If you are running Adobe Acrobat, you may first want to check the Microsoft TechNet support article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307410/.

Printer Must Be Installed

Believe it or not, you must have a printer installed for Word to perform properly, even if it's only Acrobat's PDF to Word writer. Word just doesn't know how to act without a printer driver. (Thanks to Barb for asking me a question at AllExperts.com, which reminded me to add this to my article!)

Step 1. Check Word's Startup folder.

The Word startup folder can generally be found under:

C:Documents and SettingsYour NameApplication DataMicrosoftWordStartup

Check it for the existence of files that perhaps don't belong there or conflict with Word. You could temporarily place them elsewhere and re-launch Word to see if it helps.

Step 2. Rename or delete your normal.dot file.

If Word runs for you at all, first close it. If you've really been having troubles, you may want to hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and ensure that winword doesn't appear in your Applications list or in your Processes list. If it does, End task on it.

From the Windows Start button, choose Search, then choose For Files or Folders. Type the following into the All or Part of the File Name box:

normal.dot

Tip: You must be searching for hidden files and folders, so make sure your other search options are looking there. You must also ensure that you are viewing hidden and system files by going to My Computer, then hit ToolsFolder Options, and ticking the appropriate choices, as shown below. If you aren't viewing them, you may also want to untick hiding of extensions for known file types, too.

How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Office

If you cannot find your normal.dot file during a search, rest assured that if you've ever successfully launched Word, you do have one. If you're in a network environment, it may not reside on your hard drive. If you are able to open Word at all, go to ToolsOptions, File locations tab, and double-click User templates. This is the location of your normal.dot file.

How to Troubleshoot macOS 10.15 Office Issues

Once you download Microsoft Office for macOS 10.15, currently in public beta, you might notice a few issues that other macOS users have reported. The issues might continue even with the public release version of Catalina, so it will help if you know the most common issues seen in Office for macOS 10.15 and how to fix them. Since Microsoft products don't usually play nice with iOS or macOS devices, there are quite a few of them. The top ones are listed here, along with fixes.

1. Application Slow or Crashes Regularly

Troubleshoot installing Office. The issues you encounter when trying to install Office 365, or Office 2019, 2016 or 2013 and how you fix them depends on whether your product is part of an Office for home or Office for business plan. In this guide, we will discuss the specified versions of Office, errors, and troubleshooting, along with in-depth steps for activation. How to Troubleshoot Activation Errors. Before we get started on the activation step process, let's address the troubleshoot activation errors. Office Activation Error.

One of the most frustrating things with any desktop application is that it runs slow, posing a significant hurdle to anyone looking to get their job done quickly. Even worse is a piece of software crashing on you; in such cases, losing unsaved work is a major problem. Here are some ways to fix these issues:

Fix #1: Update your Microsoft Office macOS 10.15 Product Key - If your product is not officially licensed, you may find that it runs slower than it should even though your RAM isn't under any strain from other resource-intensive processes. The obvious fix here is to get a product key to activate your copy of Office. There are several websites that offer generic, master, or OEM product keys that don't have a one-machine-one-license restriction. You can get one of those to activate your product, and see if the issue persists. If it does, move to the next fix.

In a Microsoft Office Access 2003 database, corruption in your database may occur for a number of reasons. This article contains a list of references that may help you to resolve corruption in your database. Troubleshooting and preventing database corruption. Activation Issues. If the office install is saying that there is a problem just now, then you can: Click Start. Then All Programs. Select Microsoft Office, then right-click on any of the titles seen. Select Run as Admin, then Continue and this should allow the activation to complete. Close Word and any other Office programs. You should do so now; otherwise, you'll be asked to do.

Fix #2: Upgrade your Microsoft Office Software - If you're running MS Word 2016 for Mac, you might have this same issue cropping up again and again. The icon in the dock will keep bouncing up and down but clicking on it doesn't seem to launch the application properly. Most often you'll need to do a Force Quit by right-clicking on the Word icon and then relaunching it. Instead of doing that all the time, consider upgrading to a higher version of MS Office 2016. The issue is common in version 16.11, but even applying a minor update to version 16.11.1 should do the trick. Oddly enough, this issue is generally seen exclusively with Word 2016 rather than Excel or PowerPoint.

2. Documents Saved in the Wrong Format

Some users have reported that documents that are saved in PDF format sometimes show up as .DOCX files. This typically happens when you're saving documents to a cloud service, specifically, OneDrive, Microsoft's own cloud storage service. There's no permanent fix, unfortunately, but there's a workaround that will fix the problem for a particular file.

Fix #1: Fix #1: Rename, Save Locally, Then Save to Cloud - The way to circumvent this problem is to go into OneDrive, change the .docx file extension to .pdf, then switch the location to be saved as local. After that, you need to change it again to OneDrive, which usually fixes the issue.

3. Excel Issues: Format or Extension Not Valid

One of the more frustrating issues with Microsoft Excel for Mac is the problem with permissions. Protected files usually request that you grant permission before they can be opened. This is usually in the form of what is called the Open or User password. The issue with macOS 10.15 Office (Excel only) is that it will ask you for permission even if you didn't set a password, and then the system either freezes or alerts you that the .xlsx file extension is not valid or is the wrong format. Basically, Excel tells you that its own files are of the wrong type!

Fix #1: Delete a Library File - Microsoft doesn't have a fix for this yet, but they suggest a workaround. The first thing is to Force Quit Excel and then delete a specific file from your library. The file path is ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences, which you can access using the Go To function in the Finder menu. Once there, delete the file called com.microsoft.Excel.securebookmarks.plist by right-clicking and moving to Trash. Relaunch Excel, and the problem should have gone away temporarily. You may need to do it each time you face the issue until Microsoft releases a permanent fix.

4. Font Problems in Office 2016 Version 16.9 for macOS 10.15

There's a weird issue that occurs in this specific version of Office 2016 for Mac. What happens is that your fonts get all messed up. At times one font will appear as another, or looks like garbled text, or certain fonts might even be missing from the drop-down list. The problem is that you may have multiple copies of the same font loaded in your Mac, which causes errors with the Font Picker in Office. Here's the fix.

How to install google drive. Fix #1: Set Active Copy for Fonts - First, open the Font Book app on your Mac. This can be found in the Applications folder in Finder. You can also search for and select it using Spotlight. Once it's open, choose the All Fonts option in the left sidebar menu and click the information icon, which is a lower case letter 'i'. If you know which font is causing the issue, click and expand it in the center panel. Make sure that only the latest versions are set to On. However, first, turn every version to On, and then where you see the warning message on the right-side panel, click on Resolve Manually and pick the most recent version. This is what is known as the Active Copy. Close Font Book, go back to the Office application where you first faced the issue, and see if it's resolved.

The Best PDF Editor for Mac to Complement Office for macOS 10.15 Catalina

The Office suite is incomplete if you don't have a robust PDF editor. Since Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are generally saved as PDF for easy portability and sharing, you'll need something like PDFelement to round out the experience. This is a powerful piece of software that costs a fraction of what you would pay for the same features in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. It contains all the features typically used in an office environment, such as signing PDF contracts and agreements, filling or creating forms, redacting confidential information when sharing internal documents with outsiders, securing and encrypting PDF documents, and much more.

As a matter of fact, the matches Adobe Acrobat's product feature for feature, providing users with editing, annotation, page management, merging, and other essential tools to increase your productivity and speed up the workflow in your office. Although Word does have some basic PDF functionality, it can only convert from Word to PDF. On the other hand, PDFelement is a dedicated PDF management software that offers bulk conversions from and to multiple other formats, OCR (optical character recognition), data extraction from scanned forms and documents, and other essential capabilities. If you have macOS systems in your workplace and have opted for Microsoft Office for Mac, then PDFelement is an equally essential productivity tool.

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

The first thing you should do is learn about your normal.dot file in Word. This makes Word ever so much easier to understand and helps you to resolve problems so much more quickly. Please read About Normal.dot in Microsoft Word. It'll only take a couple minutes. Then come back here to take the troubleshooting steps.

Some people may tell you to do a system restore. Though it may very well work, I feel that it's a pretty drastic measure to take to fix Word. That doesn't mean it's not necessary, but you won't likely hear it from someone who knows Word. We have no idea how much or how often you use your computer, or what you've done recently that we'd be undoing by advising a system restore.

Many will tell you to start Word using StartRun and type: winword.exe /a or to start Word in 'safe mode'. That really only lets you know that Word will run once the problem is taken care of. Use the steps below to get right to the source of the problem. More about Word Command-Line switches, which you might find interesting, can be found here.

If Word opens files fine, but you can't launch Word with the icon, the shortcut could be bad. Just find winword.exe and create a new shortcut.

Windows 2000 Update

Apparently, there's a known issue about the Windows 2000 Update (when combined, I believe, with Word 2003) that makes Word crash when saving to a floppy drive (which you shouldn't do anyway, see this article). The only fix I'm aware of at this time is to uninstall the update.

Norton AntiVirus

If you are running Norton AntiVirus, then you may first want to check the Microsoft TechNet support article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329820/.

Adobe Acrobat

If you are running Adobe Acrobat, you may first want to check the Microsoft TechNet support article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307410/.

Printer Must Be Installed

Believe it or not, you must have a printer installed for Word to perform properly, even if it's only Acrobat's PDF to Word writer. Word just doesn't know how to act without a printer driver. (Thanks to Barb for asking me a question at AllExperts.com, which reminded me to add this to my article!)

Step 1. Check Word's Startup folder.

The Word startup folder can generally be found under:

C:Documents and SettingsYour NameApplication DataMicrosoftWordStartup

Check it for the existence of files that perhaps don't belong there or conflict with Word. You could temporarily place them elsewhere and re-launch Word to see if it helps.

Step 2. Rename or delete your normal.dot file.

If Word runs for you at all, first close it. If you've really been having troubles, you may want to hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and ensure that winword doesn't appear in your Applications list or in your Processes list. If it does, End task on it.

From the Windows Start button, choose Search, then choose For Files or Folders. Type the following into the All or Part of the File Name box:

normal.dot

Tip: You must be searching for hidden files and folders, so make sure your other search options are looking there. You must also ensure that you are viewing hidden and system files by going to My Computer, then hit ToolsFolder Options, and ticking the appropriate choices, as shown below. If you aren't viewing them, you may also want to untick hiding of extensions for known file types, too.

How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Office

If you cannot find your normal.dot file during a search, rest assured that if you've ever successfully launched Word, you do have one. If you're in a network environment, it may not reside on your hard drive. If you are able to open Word at all, go to ToolsOptions, File locations tab, and double-click User templates. This is the location of your normal.dot file.

If you have customized your Word application to any degree, rename the normal.dot file when you find it. Right-click the file's name, and choose Rename. Call it abnormal.dot. If you have not customized Word, just delete your normal.dot file. If you find more than one normal.dot file, rename or delete all of them.

Now you can try launching Word again. Word should create a brand new normal.dot for you, and you're all set. Most people will not need to venture beyond this point.

Step 3. Run Detect and Repair from the Help menu.

Some people might have you do this step first. Not me. This is not usually as helpful as Step 1, but you should try it, at least if you're able to open Word. If you are, just go to the Help menu dropdown and choose Detect and Repair.

Note: Someone named snizborski reported to us on the newsgroups that he placed his installation CD in the CD Rom drive and ran Detect and Repair, and this did not help. He called Microsoft and learned that he shouldn't put the CD in until prompted, and this enabled the Detect and Repair to find the 'bad' file that caused his problem.

Step 4. Dump the Windows Word registry key.

There are many people who would rather that I didn't tell you how to do this. But any adult that's paying any attention can follow my steps. What we're doing is removing Word from the Windows registry. When you launch Word again, it will re-register itself, so you can expect it to take a little longer to launch than usual.

Hit StartRun and type regedit and hit enter. Browse, just like you would in Windows Explorer or My Computer, to the following folder:

My ComputerHKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeX.XWord

X.X will be as follows, depending on your version of Word:

• Word 2000 is 9.0

• Word 2002/XP is 10.0

• Word 2003 is 11.0

How To Troubleshoot Microsoft Office Software

Once you find it, right click the Word folder, and choose Rename. Rename it to OldWord. This is a quickie method of backing up your registry. Close the Registry Editor.

Launch Word.

Troubleshoot Microsoft Office 365

Step 5. Uninstall and Reinstall Word.

Microsoft Office 2016 Install Problems

If the above steps don't fix Word, you'll need to completely uninstall and reinstall it. Office 97 usesEraser97 to completely remove Office. Office 2000 usesEraser2K to completely remove Office. Or you can remove itmanually.