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The Windows 10 Upgrade Causes an Error When Opening Office Documents

Microsoft provides workarounds for this new issue

Aug 7, 2015 09:22 GMT  ·  By
Office 2013 is the only affected version, Microsoft says
   Office 2013 is the only affected version, Microsoft says

Moving to Windows 10 is a very challenging thing to do for some people out there because the whole process causes a number of issues that can or cannot be fixed once installation comes to an end.

For example, one of the problems that have already been acknowledged by Microsoft is that some users can no longer open Office documents after upgrading to Windows 10.

The reason is not yet clear, but we do know that, if you try to launch Word files, you get a message saying that “Word experienced an error trying to open the file,” while Excel says that “This file is corrupt and cannot be opened.”

In the case of PowerPoint, there are three different error messages that might be caused by the upgrade to Windows 10: “The application was unable to start correctly,” “PowerPoint found a problem with,” and “Sorry, PowerPoint can't read .”

There's nothing wrong with your files, and Microsoft says that these errors are most often experienced when upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and only with Office 2013.

How to fix the error

According to Microsoft, there are two ways to fix the problem, and the easiest one is to repair your copy of Office 2013 with the original installation media.

The second workaround needs you to copy the following command and paste it in a Command Prompt launched with administrator privileges:

code
icacls "%programfiles%\Microsoft Office 15" /grant *S-1-15-2-1:(OI)(CI)RX
Once you do that, Microsoft Office should be able to open all documents on your computer, without the need for a restart. Microsoft is very likely to include a patch for this issue in a future update, so if nothing works for you right now, expect a resolution for this sometime next week, when the company officially rolls out this month's Patch Tuesday updates.