Sorry, something went wrong and Word was unable to start. (24)

Anonymous
2013-02-21T21:37:42+00:00

I am running Windows 8 and am unable to repair Microsoft Word 2013 after getting this message.  I also get this message when trying to open all microsoft office documents.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2013-02-22T12:36:35+00:00

Hi Dan,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. I will assist you in providing steps to determine the cause of the issue while working with Office 2013 on the computer.

This error may also occur if the Office installation is corrupted.

Do you have multiple version of Office installed in the computer?

Step 1:

You may run the fix it from the article below to remove corrupt Office 2013 keys from the computer:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501

Note: Try to save the fix it tool to the desktop and then run it to remove Office.

If fix it tool failed to run, you may try the manual removal of Office 2013 step from the above article.

Step 2:

Try the steps from the section ‘Start an In Private browser session’ in the article below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2811180

Once you complete the above mentioned steps, you may download Office 2013 using the link below and install it using the subscription license and verify the status

https://officesetup.getmicrosoftkey.com/

https://office.microsoft.com/MyAccount.aspx

I hope the above steps help. If you need further assistance on this particular issue or any other Office related issues let us know and we will be glad to assist you.

Thank you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-04-04T10:17:29+00:00

    I have tried several things and still have this problem 'tis driving me mad , surely Microsoft can do something about this.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-04-03T22:44:31+00:00

    Tried and does 't work.

    These all started when I updated to the latest version of Office 2013 (i.e. 15.0.4701.1002) today during Good Friday.

    I hope you guys resolve this annoying problem in the next update.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-03-31T16:00:34+00:00

    Hello BL Burns,

    This sounds very helpful, I will give it a go, but first I must find my Microsoft Office "key" otherwise I won't be able to reinstall it . As you say this error drives me mad.  But, hopefully for not much longer. Thanks again

    Len W

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-03-31T10:22:56+00:00

    Have you tried removing Microsoft Office with Revo Uninstaller?  You can use the pro version for 30 days, then uninstall it again.  If you do a Forced Uninstall in Advanced mode this allows you to run a scan after uninstall and gives you the option to remove left over registry entries and folders that are probably causing your problems.

    I had a different error initially on my computer and realising I had the 64-bit version of Office installed, used the preferred methods to uninstall & reinstall the 32-bit version.  This cured the original problem, but then caused the Error 24 which drove me mad!

    After several attempts to fix it using all the suggestions on this post, I used Revo to remove everything Office related on my machine, then reinstalled it, disabled preview pane in Windows Explorer and uninstalled all add-in software that I thought might be causing an issue and so far so good! 

    FYI, the software I uninstalled was all stuff that could potentially create an Office add-in, such as PDF Creator, Cute PDF, Filezilla, etc. I just got rid of everything as a test.

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