Cannot open some Office files after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10

Anonymous
2015-08-06T07:01:10+00:00

Hi everyone,

This is Bryan from the Office team.  We are extremely sorry to learn that some of you are running into an issue with Office after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 where some of your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are failing to open with various error messages, such as:

  • Word: “Word experienced an error trying to open the file”
  • Excel: “This file is corrupt and cannot be opened”
  • PowerPoint:
    • “The application was unable to start correctly"
    • “PowerPoint found a problem with <filename>"
    • “Sorry, PowerPoint can’t read <filename>"

[UPDATE - 8/25/2015]

On Monday, a fix went out to all Office 2013 Click-to-Run users that fixed the Protected View issue that was preventing some files from opening.  For those users, the Office applications would launch and even creating new documents worked fine; however, opening some files resulted in various error messages like above.  If you haven't already been prompted to install the August update, you can manually trigger by going into an Office application like Word, then select File > Account > Update Options > Update Now.

There are other known issues that could also cause similar error messages, but those are not related to the specific Protected View issue.  Teams are working hard to determine the root cause and resolve those issues.  For instance, if you are running Windows 10 and Office is running in Windows compatibility mode for a prior version, you likely will also experience issues.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused due to this issue!

Sincerely,

Bryan

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T05:52:56+00:00

    Hi Cynthia

    I don't know if MS would allow me to go back to Win7 after this, but all i did was back up my Win7 in my hard drive just in case. Hope all goes well. If comes to worse, i can reformat my HD and reinstall my Win 7 professional from my Disc. I backed up all my files in an external HD just in case. IF you reinstall Win 10 please back up your HD.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T05:27:29+00:00

    Now will MS let you go back to Windows 7 ?? After the first installattion you have one month to go back to your original OS so I'm wondering if I try Win 10 again if I will have the option of going back. If you know please post the answer. Congratulation on the successful reinstall

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T04:44:55+00:00

    I've reinstalled windows 10 from Win 7 after reverting back to Win 7 over the last 2 days and office 2013 seemed to be working at this stage, i will give it a few days before i can be convinced that it works well as i am still skeptical about it. Hope everything goes well.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T01:43:29+00:00

    I haven't tried this but I thank you for posting it. I printed it out to use when I decide to upgrade again.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-08-13T16:39:12+00:00

    SOLUTION FOUND! (at least for my situation with Word 2013):

    1 - Open the Start Menu, right click on the Word 2013 icon, select "Open file location."

    2 - This should take you to a screen of Office 2013 shortcuts. Right click on the Word 2013 icon and again select "Open file location."

    3 - Right click on WINWORD.EXE and select "Troubleshoot compatibility."

    4 - In the Program Compatibility Troubleshooter dialog, click on "Troubleshoot program," then check the first box "The program worked in earlier versions..." and click Next.

    5 - Now you should have a dialog listing several earlier versions of Windows. You can try any of those listed, but in my case the definitive one was "Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)."

    6 - In the next dialog, click on the "Test the program" button, and if Word 2013 works correctly, you've solved the problem; click the Next button and then "Yes, save these settings for this program."

    There may still be other conflicts between Windows 10 and the various versions of Office applications, and the above may be no more than a temporary workaround, but at least it has restored my ability to use Word 2013, and a similar approach may work for those having similar issues with other Office apps in Windows 10.

    My problem with opening Access in Office 2013 was solved similarly to your steps 1-5 above, I followed these same steps, but when I tried to "test the program", Access still would not open, so I had to go back and choose another option in the troubleshooter "run as administrator" and that worked! then I proceeded to your step 6 above. Thought I might share it in case it helps anyone else!

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