Hello, I'm working in Word and Excel for Mac Version 16.51 - part of MS Office 2019, not 365. I'm on a 2020 MacBook Pro with Big Sur 11.4 (but these problems have been occurring since I was using Catalina). I'm having numerous recurring problems with both Word and Excel. I haven't seen any pattern in terms of when or in what type of file these issues occur. Note that I edit other peoples Word docs with Track Changes on all the time. For Excel files, it's rare for me to work on anyone else's files - I always create my own, whether from a template I've created or from a blank spreadsheet. In Word: Sometimes the cursor disappears and will only reappear if I close the document and reopen it. Sometimes when I try to highlight text (whether a word, line, or paragraph), Word doesn’t highlight it. It may be able to highlight above or below the text I want to highlight, but it’s as though what I want to highlight just isn’t there, though I can see it. I can edit the text, but I can’t place the cursor to know where I’m editing; it’s only after I’ve made the edit that I can tell where it was done. Sometimes it’ll give me a duplicate of a row, right above the existing row. I can’t highlight the duplicate to remove it; I can only work on the original row, and as I'm working on the original row, the same changes are occurring in the duplicated row. To get rid of the duplicate row, I've got to close out of the doc and go back in. Sometimes in the middle of typing, Word jumps down to the end of the document without my having hit any key that would cause that to happen. In Excel: When I get to the bottom of the rows that are visible on the screen, instead of scrolling to show the next line with every line that I add, it will scroll to the next available line, then partway through inputting into the first cell, it will skip to another open spreadsheet and begin inputting in that spreadsheet. It has happened often enough that I know it's not some random keystroke on my part. Sometimes I can’t click on a cell. I can click on a nearby cell, then use the arrow or tab keys to get to the one I want, but I can’t just click on it. And sometimes when I click on a cell, the cursor shows me in the cell I clicked on, but the data I’m entering in the cell shows in the cell below the one I’m entering it into. When I hit return or tab to move to the next cell, the data shows up in the cell I clicked on - just not while I’m entering it. When I type or paste a number or formula into a cell, sometimes it isn’t visible right away. I may have to hit save to see it, or click out of the spreadsheet, then back in. Or work a few more functions before it’ll show up in the cell. I can go to the cell and see it in the menu bar above, but the cell appears to be blank until the contents finally just appear. In addition, if I'm changing the formula in a cell that affects other cells, instead of the changes to the other cells showing immediately, they may not show until I either hit save or scroll until the cells that should change are off the screen. Sometimes a cell picks up a format from an earlier cell, despite the fact that I have deselected “Extend data range formats and formulas”. I've already done a full Office uninstall, including wiping all of the associated files, then reinstalling. It seems to me that my Office software is corrupt, but I don't know if that's the case, nor how to go about trying to get it replaced. I'd appreciate any help or wisdom. Thanks.

Hi Jazlyn, I'm glad to hear that Office and Mac don't have any compatibility issues. I tried ignoring the messages, but Word refused to allow me to have access to the software. With Apple's help, I to my old laptop back to an earlier OS, and reloaded Office without any issues. I have a temporary new laptop now, so we'll see if the problems I was having with Word and Excel 19 happen with the new laptop as well. Sue

Hi Knitsalot Welcome to the Insider forum. I moved your question from the general support forum to the Insider forum. When posting questions about Beta Channel builds please use the special Insider forum. I see that the current channel forum replies asked you to uninstall your beta channel build and install the current channel build. Beta channel questions are answered by different people. Reponses in the current channel forums are made by people who generally are not familiar with beta channel builds or what's going on with them, hence the advice to switch to a build they are familiar with. I think they should have moved your question to the Insider forum instead of switching you to a current channel build for what I assume is their convenience. Another forum convention is that you should discuss problems individually. Putting Excel comments into the Word forum means that the Excel folks won't see your Excel worries. It's free to make questions, so limit your comments to the application whose forum you're posting to and you'll get much higher quality replies. It's also a good idea to keep each question about a specific problem. You're OK on that point because all your comments involve how the screen is being drawn. The whole purpose of beta builds is to expose trouble before it ever gets to the current channel or even Preview channel. I would expect you would not have been told to remove the beta channel build and then install 16.50 had you posted to the beta channel, which is currently build 16.52 It's generally not a good idea to install previous versions of Office. Doing so can make your Outlook profile unusable. You're lucky there hasn't been a recent change to the way Outlook uses its database. When going backwards, it is very important to completely remove your current software before installing the old version. I see that you removed Office before reinstalling, so that is good. Because you have the same experience on three entirely different versions (16.50 16.51 and 16.52) it is highly unlikely the problem is related to Office software or installation issues. If this were a common occurrence, the forum would be flooded with other reports like yours. It's not. There have been a handful of reports saying Excel gets slow when OneDrive application has been installed. Have you installed the OneDrive app or any other app that might be trying draw the screen while your Office apps are running? Do you have a boat-load of fonts? Are you using any fonts not supplied with Mac OS or Microsoft Office? Have tried running in a new Mac OS user account? If not, go to System Preferences > Accounts and make a new user account. Then, while in the new account, test Word and Excel and see if there's a difference.

Hi Sue, About "there is no compatibility between the Graphics card on MAC and Office.", I mean that the Graphics card on MAC works well with Office. Since Office for Mac 2011 has ended support already, it's normal to have a popup message about "upgrade". You can ignore the message and you'll still be able to use Office for Mac 2011. Best regards, Jazlyn

Hi Jazlyn, Thank you for your response. Just to clarify. You said "there is no compatibility between the Graphics card on MAC and Office." Did you mean to say that there is no compatibility issue between the Graphics card on MAC and Office? Or do you mean that they are incompatible, which means that they won't work together? In case I have to take my laptop in for repair, I am hoping to use my older MacBook (2013) while the new one is being repaired. I used to use MS Office 2011 on the older laptop. I still have the CD for it, and I was able to download the software to the older laptop (not a 64-bit), but when I went to open up Word and Excel 2011, I got a popup message that said "Microsoft Word.app" needs to be updated. You can get the latest version, Microsoft Office 365, from the App Store. I don't want to do that - I just want to run MS Office 2011 on the old laptop without updating. How do I do that? Thank you, Sue

Word randomly duplicates lines of text, Excel won't allow me to type in cells and cells appear empty even when not (Office for Mac)

Anonymous

Hello,

I'm working in Word and Excel for Mac Version 16.51 - part of MS Office 2019, not 365. I'm on a 2020 MacBook Pro with Big Sur 11.4 (but these problems have been occurring since I was using Catalina).

I'm having numerous recurring problems with both Word and Excel. I haven't seen any pattern in terms of when or in what type of file these issues occur. Note that I edit other peoples Word docs with Track Changes on all the time. For Excel files, it's rare for me to work on anyone else's files - I always create my own, whether from a template I've created or from a blank spreadsheet.

In Word:

Sometimes the cursor disappears and will only reappear if I close the document and reopen it.
Sometimes when I try to highlight text (whether a word, line, or paragraph), Word doesn’t highlight it. It may be able to highlight above or below the text I want to highlight, but it’s as though what I want to highlight just isn’t there, though I can see it. I can edit the text, but I can’t place the cursor to know where I’m editing; it’s only after I’ve made the edit that I can tell where it was done.
Sometimes it’ll give me a duplicate of a row, right above the existing row. I can’t highlight the duplicate to remove it; I can only work on the original row, and as I'm working on the original row, the same changes are occurring in the duplicated row. To get rid of the duplicate row, I've got to close out of the doc and go back in.
Sometimes in the middle of typing, Word jumps down to the end of the document without my having hit any key that would cause that to happen.

In Excel:

When I get to the bottom of the rows that are visible on the screen, instead of scrolling to show the next line with every line that I add, it will scroll to the next available line, then partway through inputting into the first cell, it will skip to another open spreadsheet and begin inputting in that spreadsheet. It has happened often enough that I know it's not some random keystroke on my part.
Sometimes I can’t click on a cell. I can click on a nearby cell, then use the arrow or tab keys to get to the one I want, but I can’t just click on it. And sometimes when I click on a cell, the cursor shows me in the cell I clicked on, but the data I’m entering in the cell shows in the cell below the one I’m entering it into. When I hit return or tab to move to the next cell, the data shows up in the cell I clicked on - just not while I’m entering it.
When I type or paste a number or formula into a cell, sometimes it isn’t visible right away. I may have to hit save to see it, or click out of the spreadsheet, then back in. Or work a few more functions before it’ll show up in the cell. I can go to the cell and see it in the menu bar above, but the cell appears to be blank until the contents finally just appear. In addition, if I'm changing the formula in a cell that affects other cells, instead of the changes to the other cells showing immediately, they may not show until I either hit save or scroll until the cells that should change are off the screen.
Sometimes a cell picks up a format from an earlier cell, despite the fact that I have deselected “Extend data range formats and formulas”.

I've already done a full Office uninstall, including wiping all of the associated files, then reinstalling. It seems to me that my Office software is corrupt, but I don't know if that's the case, nor how to go about trying to get it replaced.

I'd appreciate any help or wisdom.

Thanks.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hi Jim,

I do not have an Office 365 subscription. I bought Office 2019 as a desktop application. I don't want the subscription, which is why I chose Office 2019.

I've got my laptop back from Apple. They ran all of their diagnostics on the laptop and found that there were no hardware issues with it at all. They completely wiped the hard drive and installed an entirely new operating system. I have downloaded version 16.50 of Office and have installed it. Hopefully I just had a buggy OS to begin with, and with the new OS, Word and Excel will work properly now.

I will let you know if the issues start back up again.

Thank you,

Sue

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16 additional answers

Anonymous

2021-07-09T18:34:05+00:00

Hi Jazlyn,

I'm glad to hear that Office and Mac don't have any compatibility issues.

I tried ignoring the messages, but Word refused to allow me to have access to the software. With Apple's help, I to my old laptop back to an earlier OS, and reloaded Office without any issues.

I have a temporary new laptop now, so we'll see if the problems I was having with Word and Excel 19 happen with the new laptop as well.

Sue
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Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP

2021-07-09T01:13:48+00:00

Hi Knitsalot

Welcome to the Insider forum. I moved your question from the general support forum to the Insider forum. When posting questions about Beta Channel builds please use the special Insider forum. I see that the current channel forum replies asked you to uninstall your beta channel build and install the current channel build.

Beta channel questions are answered by different people. Reponses in the current channel forums are made by people who generally are not familiar with beta channel builds or what's going on with them, hence the advice to switch to a build they are familiar with. I think they should have moved your question to the Insider forum instead of switching you to a current channel build for what I assume is their convenience.

Another forum convention is that you should discuss problems individually. Putting Excel comments into the Word forum means that the Excel folks won't see your Excel worries. It's free to make questions, so limit your comments to the application whose forum you're posting to and you'll get much higher quality replies. It's also a good idea to keep each question about a specific problem. You're OK on that point because all your comments involve how the screen is being drawn.

The whole purpose of beta builds is to expose trouble before it ever gets to the current channel or even Preview channel. I would expect you would not have been told to remove the beta channel build and then install 16.50 had you posted to the beta channel, which is currently build 16.52

It's generally not a good idea to install previous versions of Office. Doing so can make your Outlook profile unusable. You're lucky there hasn't been a recent change to the way Outlook uses its database. When going backwards, it is very important to completely remove your current software before installing the old version. I see that you removed Office before reinstalling, so that is good.

Because you have the same experience on three entirely different versions (16.50 16.51 and 16.52) it is highly unlikely the problem is related to Office software or installation issues. If this were a common occurrence, the forum would be flooded with other reports like yours. It's not.

There have been a handful of reports saying Excel gets slow when OneDrive application has been installed. Have you installed the OneDrive app or any other app that might be trying draw the screen while your Office apps are running?

Do you have a boat-load of fonts? Are you using any fonts not supplied with Mac OS or Microsoft Office?

Have tried running in a new Mac OS user account? If not, go to System Preferences > Accounts and make a new user account. Then, while in the new account, test Word and Excel and see if there's a difference.
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Anonymous

2021-07-08T06:10:31+00:00

Hi Sue,

About "there is no compatibility between the Graphics card on MAC and Office.", I mean that the Graphics card on MAC works well with Office.

Since Office for Mac 2011 has ended support already, it's normal to have a popup message about "upgrade". You can ignore the message and you'll still be able to use Office for Mac 2011.

Best regards,

Jazlyn
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Anonymous

2021-07-07T15:04:40+00:00

Hi Jazlyn,

Thank you for your response.

Just to clarify. You said "there is no compatibility between the Graphics card on MAC and Office." Did you mean to say that there is no compatibility issue between the Graphics card on MAC and Office? Or do you mean that they are incompatible, which means that they won't work together?

In case I have to take my laptop in for repair, I am hoping to use my older MacBook (2013) while the new one is being repaired. I used to use MS Office 2011 on the older laptop. I still have the CD for it, and I was able to download the software to the older laptop (not a 64-bit), but when I went to open up Word and Excel 2011, I got a popup message that said "Microsoft Word.app" needs to be updated. You can get the latest version, Microsoft Office 365, from the App Store. I don't want to do that - I just want to run MS Office 2011 on the old laptop without updating. How do I do that?

Thank you,

Sue
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