Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature? And will not Stop!

Anonymous
2010-08-12T12:59:59+00:00

Yesterday night, I opened Word and a message popped up saying to update... something about english... I am sorry I can't exactly remember what it said.  I clicked ok.  When I tried using word, it was very slow and sometimes not responding.  A pop up at the bottom right of my screen came up (with the Office Logo in the bar next to the clock) saying that Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature... Microsoft office may appear unresponsive temporarily as the required files are downloaded. 

Well... this was last night, I had my computer open for maybe an hour or two after this.  When I turned my computer on this morning and used word, the same pop up returned.  When I click on the pop up or the office icon, it immediately disappears and does nothing.  And there is no way to access how far along the download has gotten.  Does anyone know what this is or how I can stop it?  I am worried that it may have been a virus or something.

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Anonymous
2011-09-26T18:02:28+00:00

SOLUTION:

Let it download the "required feature" but only after you have restarted your computer. It takes about 5-7 minutes for it to process once you click on the application (Microsoft Word Starter 2010) and about 10-15 minutes for it to download the "required feature."

The Microsoft Word/Excel Starter 2010 applications were pre-installed on my 2010 HP desktop PC.

Back in July (of 2011), I had to download a free trial of the full Home and Student version because I had to do a PowerPoint project.

It's now September, and when I opened Word Starter, it said that the trial for the Home and Student version had expired. I'm guessing that the trial version became the default opener for all my Word documents, and I only noticed it until recently because of the expiration message.

So, I decided to uninstall it (I made sure that it was the trial version by looking at the date it was created so that I didn't accidentally delete my pre-installed Starter version).

Well, when I tried to open up Word documents, it wouldn't allow me to. The reason was because those documents were set to open on the default application, which was the Microsoft Office Home and Student version - the trial application that I had deleted.

Now, I wanted to set the files to open up in Word Starter, but there was no way to set up the program as the default opener. Simply right-clicking a Word document and choosing "Open with..." did not work, because the Starter version doesn't seem to be a "real" application. It's a Click-to-Run application, and I couldn't choose it as the default program.

So, I read other threads on this forum that tried to offer solutions to this set-to-default problem. Most had said that I had to "repair" the program. I did that.

I then tried opening a Word document, but then it froze up as soon as I clicked anywhere on the page.

Then, this message would pop up in the lower right portion of the screen: "Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature...[something about not responding as it's updating...blah blah]."

It kept saying that, but there was a flagged problem (indicated by the white flag on Windows 7 OS's). The problem stated that Microsoft Office needed to download an update, but there was no specific update for it even when I manually tried checking for Windows Updates (Start > All Programs > Windows Update).

I was getting really frustrated.

So, I shut down my PC, and turned it back on.

I opened up Microsoft Word Starter 2010, and it had to process for about 5-7 minutes. I thought something was wrong with it but figured to let it continue "processing" just in case it was actually trying to do something.

When it finally finished processing, a blank document page opened up, but as soon as I clicked anywhere on the page, the message popped up again: "Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature...," but there was no problem about the update this time (the white flag did not indicate a problem). Therefore, it really must have started updating the "required feature" after restarting the PC and running the application.

As I was searching for the solution on this thread, it finished downloading the "required feature" and works perfectly fine, now.

I still don't know how to set Word Starter as the default opener for Word documents ever since I deleted the trial version, but at least it's up and running just fine.

...and I still don't know what the "required feature" was or how to check the progress of the download.

Again, the solution is as follows:

  1. Restart (or completely shut down and then turn back on) your computer.
  2. Click Microsoft Word Starter 2010 and let it complete its processing.
  3. Let it finish downloading the "required feature."
  4. Hopefully, this works for all of you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-07-31T03:08:05+00:00

    Hey I have fixed mine and so far I have not had any annoying pop ups.

    After a while it seemed that the update would have been downloaded and that the pop up was just a glitch. I found this forum and most people said to buy the full version, unstill/reinstall or just disable updates all together.

    I found you should let the annoying pop up continue for a little while *i did this just in case it aculy was installing an update* then in Microsoft office Click-to-Run. Click:

    Flie -> Help -> click the "updates" drop down menu. then select  "apply updates"

     this will close down Click-to-Run so make sure any unsaved work is saved. Click OK. it will then close and "apply updates" to Microsoft office Click-to-Run. Wait maybe 5 mins *this is what i did to make sure every thing was working normally* then re-open Click-to-run. there should no longer be any pop ups.

    hope this helps you solve your problem as it helped solved mine.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-04-06T13:30:48+00:00

    There are two solutions to this problem :

    1. Disable Updates

    Open Click to run , Click on file tab, Click help, On the right side of the screen there will be a button named Update options, click on it and disable Updates.

    This will stop the message from appearing but you may get an error saying the product is damaged, asking you to repair it, don't pay attention to it.

    After months of searching this was the only way I could get rid of that irritating Notification.

    1. Buy an Office Suite of your choice

    People claim this does fix the issue as the program is no longer a lightweight replacement but rather a full fledged one with proper update mechanisms.

    I do not personally know if it will fix the issue but it most probably will.

    But it's an expensive sloution when there are lots of free office suites available1

    Hope this helped!

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-01-13T20:37:52+00:00

    Uninstalling click to run says my Microsoft Office Home and Student will be uninstalled as well, so in a few words, to solve the problem means we have to uninstall our current Microsoft Office version and reinstall it.

    I got Microsoft Office Home and Student because I used to have the trial version of Microsoft Office Home and Business, and I purchased the Microsoft Office Home and Student key, so when I entered this key, I got to download Microsoft Office Home and Student.

    My system is Vista.

    I am trying to remove Microsoft click to run and going along with uninstalling Microsoft Office Home and Student as a result. I clicked uninstall from Programs and features in the Control Panel. After a while, nothing changed. I didn't see the program uninstalling itself. If I retried, it kept telling me to wait until the program that is currently being uninstalled completes being unistalled or changed. I went to task manager and saw that Click to run was still running, so I ended the program.

    As soon as I did that, the uninstaller told me that in order to completely uninstall click to run I need to restart my computer, which I will do next and let you know the results. At first glance, my copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student doesn't seem to have been uninstalled. After restarting the computer, Microsoft Office Home and Student is gone, so I entered my key and downloaded the program again, but it's through click and run again, so let's see if this will solve the problem.

    Microsoft Office Home and Student downoladed correctly, Power Point opened but it went unresponsive when I tried to click on the PP document that opened with some Microsoft-Office-related presentation. The thing saying that Office was downloading the required feature reapeared for a couple minutes, but then it was gone, so I thought the problem was solved. I retried using Word, and I got the same "Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature." I let it be for awhile. The "Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature" message kept popping up from time to time in the lower-right corner of my screen.

    After about 30 minutes, Word finally opened. The "Microsoft Office is downloading the required feature" message kept popping up from time to time in the lower-right corner of my screen, and Power Point continued unresponsive.

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-01-10T23:04:20+00:00

    yh but how do i download the microsoft office without downloading the click to run, it seems to be the only available download for microsoft office.

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