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
    2015-08-28T03:07:59+00:00

    I went back to Window 8.1 (you have one month to go back to a previous version) and all word and excel files are working perfectly. However, try this first. I didn't know about this until I had restored previous program. If you use One Drive go to the One Drive folder in explorer and right click then choose properties then choose security and make sure all the users have full control if not select the user and click on full control then apply. I think this may have been the problem I was having with Windows 10. Also do same procedure with your pc documents folder or any other folders you can't open. I'm not a computer person and I think I found this solution on Google but it works. But going back to your previous version of Windows works too. Also, we have a year to upgrade so I'm giving them time to do some major updates to Windows 10. In fact, everyday a popup comes up and tells me I have a free upgrade to Windows 10 available so I don't think I will forget about it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-28T01:15:48+00:00

    This is not working either. Any more ideas?

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-28T00:55:10+00:00

    I can't even open office apps since upgrading to Windows 10. In the case of Word when I try to open an existing file their is a message across the top saying it's an illegal copy ?? which it's not.

    This is an unacceptable stuff up by Microsoft that is affecting my business efficiency.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-08-28T00:16:07+00:00

    If I go back to windows 7 will my Word work again?

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-08-28T00:11:32+00:00

    I cannot open Word since I downloaded Office 10. Your suggestion was to Word>file>Account>Update Now. I cannot open Word to get to file and the rest, if I go back to the previous version will my Word come back?

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