Office 2013 Professional offline help - how do I install it

Its nowid September 2016. Help did work on my machjne until a bug in Windows 10 needed a re install.  Now there is no help at all. I paid for a product with help

 Removing or disabling it is fraudulent

 Any lawyers out there able to take on Microsoft?

I'm on Windows 10 (just got the Anniversary udate) and offline help still works in Word 2010 and 2013 (although 2013's offline help is paltry).  I assume the same is true of Word 2016. Did you try pressing the F1 key? What happened?

I am a lawyer, and would not want to spend the time on this. On the other hand if you have a spare couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest, I'm sure you can find a lawyer willing to help you spend it. Probably on other issues with Office and Word though, not this one.

But It opens the Windows Tips app.

Have you tried launching Word in safe mode? Same problem?

Exactly the same problem as reported earlier. Check Google for "office 2013 help files not working" Last week there were 25,000,000 references to this. Today its 543,000,000.

Looks like the problem is growing.

I did find an explanation from Microsoft. Seems they removed the help files to save 3.2% of the file size of an installation. Not much to me with 6 terabytes of space on my drives, but I suppose it cuts their bandwidth costs. They will not be restored unless enough people complain.

I saw things like this coming when they gave a free update to Windows 10. Get that free and pay through the nose for everything else it seems. I hope I am wrong, but .....

Just for reference, does the very expensive replacement for office - Office 365 - have any help files, on or off line?

Have fun.

Howard

Have you tried launching Word in safe mode? Same problem?

There is no drop down on the help. Just a message saying that it has stopped working. Contact Office .com for  solution. None provided. Deleted the whole system and re- installed. Still no help system. Worse still it deleted my whole email systems.

Its now in September 2016. Help did work on my machjne until a bug in Windows 10 needed a re install.  Now there is no help at all. I paid for a product with help

 Removing or disabling it is fraudulent

 Any lawyers out there able to take on Microsoft?

I'm on Windows 10 (just got the Anniversary udate) and offline help still works in Word 2010 and 2013 (although 2013's offline help is paltry).  I assume the same is true of Word 2016. Did you try pressing the F1 key? What happened?

I am a lawyer, and would not want to spend the time on this. On the other hand if you have a spare couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest, I'm sure you can find a lawyer willing to help you spend it. Probably on other issues with Office and Word though, not this one.

Charles,

That is why large companies like Microsoft get away with removing features that have been paid for - the ridiculous charges that some Lawyers make for their services. In the UK, the simple way is to send such companies a bill for the time and effort that you have put into trying to solve the problems. They always ignore your letters and so after a while you can put them into the small claims court. They always ignore these also. At that stage, for a small fee - perhaps $100 in your currency, you can then get a judgement against them and send in the bailiff. Works most times, even against spam telephone call companies.

However, my suggestion was a bit tongue in cheek.

Yes I have tried pressing F1. I have spoken to Microsoft and they have reinstalled my Office for me and it still does not work. I have tried all the suggestions on this and many other forums all with no results. Basically it would seem to me its either a coding error or a deliberate action on some versions of Office, as there are hundreds of people world wide having the same problem. Usually in such cases, someone in the know works out a fix.

Its been around since windows 8 was launched, but not on CD based Office systems - only on the downloadable versions as far as I can make out.

This is what comes on my screen when I press F1 from word, outlook, or any of the office suite programs.

That does not look to me to be a catchall error message - its designed for just the problem that I am having. Also if you take the trip to that page, there is no support for Office 2013, even though the product's life span has not yet ended. To a cynical old programmer of 38 years experience, like me, it would seem that Microsoft has entered the "You must have everything as a service whether you want it or not" era, like many other software companies - Adobe for instance with their Adobe CS6 suite, for which I paid thousands and now no longer gets any support at all.

I hope that I am wrong, so if anyone knows of a fix, please tell me. I will do the same if I find one.