14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft rolled out six different security updates as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday, but it turns out that one of the optional fixes is breaking down Office 2013 once and for all.
A number of users turned to Microsoft’s Community forums to complain about the issues, explaining that since Patch Tuesday, Office 2013 fails to start, with a simple “Something went wrong” error displayed on the screen.
The same issue has been confirmed by several users who also tried the common workarounds, but none seem to work at this point.
“As of Saturday, July 12, I have been unable to use Microsoft Office 2013. It has disappeared from my Start Menu. I have installed the new update that was in my toolbox this afternoon, restarted my computer, but still no luck. I do not have the option to ‘Repair’ Office, as is suggested in the Error Message. With the number of questions to this forum noted, something globally has happened. Please help,” one user explained.
While at first nobody knew what was causing the issue, another affected user claims that it’s all due to optional updates KB2973488, KB2967917 and KB2962409, which seem to be causing the Microsoft Office 2013 launch errors on Windows 8.1.
Microsoft has already confirmed the issue and promised a patch, but some users complain that an updated build of the fix has yet to be shipped to their computers.
“Shortly after the release of the July Public Update, we received notification of a potential issue affecting a subset of Office 365 ProPlus users. In some cases, users running Office may not be able to launch Office products after the July 2014 updates are installed,” a company support engineer said.
One of the users whose Office 2013 installation has been broken down by the botched bulletin claims to have found a solution, even though many complained that uninstalling and reinstalling the productivity suite didn’t make any difference.
He claims that using Microsoft’s dedicated tool for uninstalling Microsoft Office 2013 is the right way to do it, with a manual reinstallation of the application dealing with the issues. “I then re-installed and it works fine now, even with the new Windows updates applied,” he pointed out.
Unsurprisingly, some users expressed their frustration on the forums, calling for Microsoft to provide a fix as soon as possible because Office is in most of the cases the key productivity suite for many businesses.
“This is not good enough. This is a disaster. To force people to uninstall and reinstall is a shameful disaster. You had better come up with a better solution or I will move my entire organization to Google Docs,” one user posted.