Unable to save files in Word 2016 for Mac on OS X El Cap

Anonymous
2016-02-18T19:08:46+00:00

Hi folks,

I'm running into a situation affecting some but not all Macs at our office. We recently updated to Office 2016 (via Offiec365), and are running into problems with Word in particular. 

What's happening is that after opening or creating a new document and making changes, typing ⌘-S to save does not do anything, and the Save and Save As options are grayed out in the menu. Closing the window or quitting Word will trigger the "Do you want to save..." dialog, which then appears to allow you to save the document, but the document that is actually saved is completely blank. 

Has anyone encountered this also? It's affecting a couple of iMacs and a MacBook Pro, but some iMacs and laptops are not experiencing the same problem.

Thanks,

Tom

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-02-13T23:50:13+00:00

I had this issue persistently last year but it seems fixed now with latest releases all round. I suggest running Microsoft Autoupdate, and doing manually every few days too. Also join the optional Office Insider program to get latest fixes.

My system:

Word for Mac 15.32 (170201)

MacBoook Pro (2016), 10.12.3

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-10-12T11:25:50+00:00

    I am having the same problem.  I recently updated to Office 365 2016 on my Macbook.  I have El Capitan 10.11.6 and I am currently updating Office to version 15.27.0 from 26.

    In Word nothing happens when I try to save or save as.  And when I am able to save by closing the doc it shows the document has 0 bytes.

    This is incredibly frustrating and makes the product almost unusable for my needs.  Thinking I will go back to 2011 version.

    Any other suggestions or fixes?

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-10-13T08:02:35+00:00

    KarenW5, I actually solved this issue thanks to the help of someone on these forums. Here's what helped me:

    You can try to create a new user account for your Office 2016 for Mac. Possible cause of this issue is a corrupted file in your user account. If this issue still persist we recommend to do a manual uninstall on your Office 2016. Follow the steps provided on this link.

    I followed the instructions in the link and that solved it. It's basically a complete uninstall of the programs, removing specific files which aren't otherwise removed when you just dump the icons in the trash.

    Then reinstall Microsoft Office.

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  3. John Korchok 236.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-10-19T21:34:37+00:00

    This problem plagues some users and others never experience it (like me). Do you still have the same issue when saving to your user folder (Users/YourUserName/Documents)?

    As L_Davis mentioned, you can also create a new user account, log into it and see if you can run Word with fewer problems. If you can, it indicates your user profile has some degree of corruption. You should then consider transferring your user information to the new profile. Here is a page from Apple Communities about how to do this: How do I move all my files from one User Profile (account) into another?

    Finally, you can try completely uninstalling following these directions: Troubleshoot Office 2016 for Mac issues by completely uninstalling before you reinstall to uninstall Office, then reinstall. If it's any consolation, I've done this half a dozen times in the last year with Office 2016 for Mac.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-11-17T04:08:51+00:00

    Still happening on 15.27 and El Capitan. Definitely expect saving functionality to work and expect to have a Microsoft PM to read this and prioritize accordingly, i.e. fix it asap, 4 pages of comments on how save doesn't work on Word 2016.

    Work arounds include "sharing" document to email, however if you are tracking changes it will won't save the review comments, and will replace with [initials].

    Another workaround is to print the document and use the mac menu to save as pdf, this will save the comments in the .pdf file

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