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
    2016-03-31T16:49:45+00:00

    See solution above

    there is no solution above

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-01-11T06:41:40+00:00

    I don't know if this will work for you because I did go back to Windows 8.1 but it seemed that Windows 10 changed some security settings in my documents Office 2013. Try this:

    Go to Explorer and right click on the document files that won't open, click on the security tab and see if all the "permissions for SYSTEM" are checked. If not check them then click on apply.

    Hope this helps and let me know if it does because I would like to upgrade to Windows 10 again.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-01-11T00:46:01+00:00

    I am having this issue as well with Office Pro Plus 2016. Everything was working fine in December, but as soon as I started back at school last week is when I started having issues. I'm running Windows 10, I installed Office 2016 after upgrading to Windows 10 Pro. Also I have a classmate that is also running Windows 10 and Office Pro Plus 2016 as well but he is having no problems.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-01T05:49:50+00:00

    Wish I could help but I returned to Windows 8.1 and haven't had any problems with Office 2013 since. I would like to upgrade to Windows 10 but it looks like the problems still exist. I spent way too much time trying to make Windows 10 work before I gave up and went back to 8.1

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-11-30T15:13:23+00:00

    Really!

    This fix suggests that I update Office. If my Office2013 applications won't stay open, how in the world are you supposed to update them!!! This thread is from August and today is 11/30/15. I still can't find any solutions.

    I upgraded from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro and when I attempt to open any of my Office 2013 applications the flash open then disappear!!!! Help ASAP

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