Office 2013 only works in safe mode

Anonymous
2013-03-18T20:37:05+00:00

Hi

I have recently downloaded Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 as part of the on the Home Use Program.

Ever since I installed it (the 64 bit version on windows 7) I have had nothing but trouble and can only use it in 'Safe Mode', I've only tried Word & Excel as these are the only two I need to use. I've had a little look around on the internet and it seems like disabling add ins will help, so to my knowledge all add ins are disabled on the COM add ins bit?

Both Word and Excel crash with the 'Stopped Working' message and they always crash when you close them, but most of the time you just have to wait a minute and they'll crash sometimes when you're not even using them!

Does this sound like a familiar problem can I get my copy of Office 2013 to run in 'Normal Mode'?

Thanks

Nick

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2013-05-19T12:58:44+00:00

Thank you so much for posting this, i thought i'd never be able to fix the Stopped Working issue. 

Disabling the hardware acceleration worked a treat, much appreciated.

Fix 2: Disable hardware acceleration (This fixed MY problem!)

  1. Run regedit (Win + R ; "regedit")
  2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common
  3. Create a New Key and name it "Graphics"
  4. Select Graphics, right-click on the right panel and create a New DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it DisableHardwareAcceleration.

5. Enter Value data as 1

Try to run Excel normally now.

Good luck!

Was this answer helpful?

90+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

43 additional answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2016-11-16T10:33:07+00:00

    Nicks SS,

    Thank you very much, this was very very helpful.

    MK

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2017-03-18T03:19:41+00:00

    I don't understand... How can you run MS Office 2013 when you're in Windows Safe Mode? I mean, if I try to open a Word document in Windows Safe Mode, (I have Windows 7 home premium 64bit), an alert opens and essentially tells me I can't do that because the Word doc doesn't have all the required registry info to open.

    What I wind up doing if I am in Safe Mode and want to read a Word doc I previously created and saved, is to open it with Notepad or Word pad. Either will work but the format, styling, and font type, (if you had installed a 3rd party font style for that particular document), will very likely not be the same.

    If, and when you make a change or add any text to the Notepad/word pad doc in Safe mode, when you save it, Windows will open an alert suggesting that you save it as a copy. This would keep any chance of a format/style change to your original Word document from happening.

    Then when you open that document in the Windows "Normal" boot mode, you can copy it to the original  and keep the original's format.

    Anyway, I still don't know how you opened Word, (I'm assuming you opened an office option such as Word, Publisher, etc

    Rich.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2017-03-18T05:39:00+00:00

    Not Windows Safe Mode, but Word Safe Mode

    Does whatever the problem was, still occur if you start Word in Safe Mode by holding down the CTRL key while starting it until asked to confirm that you want to start it in that mode?

    If not, see the section dealing with Add-Ins in the KnowledgeBase article "How to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word" at:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/921541

    If that doesn't help, tell us about the original problem.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments