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
    2015-08-16T15:15:34+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>"

    We are actively working on a fix to resolve this issue, but in the meantime, if you are running into this issues the following workaround should help unblock you:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3086786

    This issue is encountered when a document is opened in Protected View. Protected View is a security feature in Office that opens potentially untrusted files in a secure sandbox where users can read them without fear of the file taking over their computer.  You may have seen a number of posts that recommend solutions to disable or bypass Protected View to prevent this issue. We strongly discourage you from following these suggestions as it reduces the security of Office and leaves your computer open to attack from malicious users.

    Once the workaround is completed, files which were previously causing this issue, should now open in Protected View allowing you to read them first within a secure sandbox and allow you to enable editing if you trust these files and need to work with them further.

    We apologize for the inconvenience caused due to this issue!

    Sincerely,

    Bryan

    But what happens when you upgrade from 8?  all of my applications are crashing, and Outlook says I have an unlicensed product, so my e-mails are crashing too.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-17T01:22:50+00:00

    Me too . . . I hope they fix this problem soon so we can upgrade to Win 10

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-17T01:25:32+00:00

    That is is interesting that Windows 8 users had more problems. I uninstalled and reinstalled Office 2013  and still had awful results so finally had to go back to Windows 8.1 and it is working perfectly.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-08-17T03:02:10+00:00

    Thank you. Finally I had to install again Windows 7 SP because the Windows Updates caused problems with Office 2013. In addition to that I called to the Office Technical Support and they found that there is an exe file called Abbyy Fine Reader (maybe some of you have it) which blocks the Office files preview. So once I uninstalled it, Offcie worked correctly. Hope this helps!

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-08-17T04:29:54+00:00

    I have  same issue as VK-7881.  All Office apps open fine except for EXCEL.  Get the "Excel has run into a error that prevents it from working correctly" message when Excel is launched directly or from a file.   No difference.  Tried all fixes in this email stream with no success.  

    I started getting this error after upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 today.  Version of Office is 15.0.4745.1001.  Excel fails to launch when executing directly or when opening a file (all Excel files).  All files are on my local machine.

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