14 DAY TRIAL // The latest round of non-security updates for the Microsoft Office productivity suite went live earlier this week, bringing patches for all versions of the software.
But as some Microsoft Office 2016 users found out the hard way, one of the updates published by Microsoft this week caused more harm than good.
And this is because update KB4462238 comes with a bug that breaks down Office apps, a behavior that Microsoft itself acknowledged a few hours ago.
“After this update is installed, clicking a hyperlink in an Office application, such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Outlook, may cause the application to stop working. If you experience this issue, you can uninstall the update by following the instructions in the "More information" section,” Microsoft says.
The “More information” section, however, no longer exists, as the software giant puled the update completely.
New updates next week
The update was originally supposed to correct synchronization issues in OneNote 2016, so should you decide to remove KB4462238 from your system, these issues might be back on the device.
For the time being, uninstalling the update seems to be pretty much the only workaround in case the Office productivity suite is broken down after installing KB4462238. Microsoft hasn’t provided any details regarding a fix, but more information should be offered when new updates land next week as part of the May 2019 Patch Tuesday cycle.
Microsoft will release updates containing both security and non-security fixes on Patch Tuesday, but it remains to be seen if the company has enough time to address this bug on such a short notice.
Devices where the latest Office updates aren’t installed would no longer be offered the botched patch KB4462238. At the time of writing this article, there are no reports concerning other possible Office updates causing issues on devices where they are installed.