Office makes an annoying clicking sound all the time now

Anonymous

Hi, I have a weird issue. Recently, every time I open a Word, Excel, or other Office document, it persistently makes a "click" sound periodically in the background. The sound is the same sound that Windows makes when you open a folder when browsing My Documents, for example. Despite the fact that the click sound happens all the time, nothing appears to be happening in Word.

One surefire way to get it to happen: open the File tab. When I open the File tab from the Home tab, it always makes a "click" sound as if it's doing something, but I don't know what it's doing. This happens in Word, Excel, and every other app I've tried. Also, if I open a Word document and then ALT-TAB to an internet browser, and then come back to the Word document in a few minutes, it makes that click sound again.

I recently upgraded my Office suite. Is that the reason? Does anyone know how to get rid of it? It's just really annoying.

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Anonymous

Just a suggestion, try signing out and back in to your Microsoft Office account. I was having the same incessant clicking sound issue and after I signed out and back in, the clicking went away. It had to deal with the fact that my user wasn't properly signed in and I had an exclamation mark next to my name in the top right area of MS Word/Excel/etc. After I signed in again, the exclamation mark went away, and so did the clicking.

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HansV 462.7K MVP Volunteer Moderator

Select File > Options.

Click on Advanced in the navigation pane on the left hand side.

Scroll down to the General section.

Make sure that the check box "Provide feedback with sound" is clear (not ticked).

Click OK.

Does that help?

Moderator edit: Note that this option is now located at File | Options | Ease of Access.

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56 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-01-01T14:34:40+00:00

I have the same symptoms, but have a different explanation of the root cause than HansV MVP.

I have Office 2016 managed by Office 365 under Click-to-Run. I, thus, have an account with Microsoft.

When I have a VPN established with my company's network, the account signs in fine. Then no clicking sounds are made.

When I do not have the VPN established for an extended period (days or so), the account gives an error message. This is shown as on orange triangle next to my name in the title bar of Word/Outlook/etc. In that situation the clicking sounds are heard.

In my case disabling "Provide feedback with sound" will not solve the problem.

As I'm not using the VPN all the time, I cannot prevent the problem (signin error) from occuring. So my work around is to disable the Start Navigation sound.
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Anonymous

2017-12-31T18:15:09+00:00

Thanks for your update. See also my response to this question that was finally resolved by looking at the settings in Word. I'm very surprised that Microsoft experts couldn't answer this annoying question.
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Anonymous

2017-12-31T05:51:21+00:00

Hi,

I had the same issue and did not find much resource online to resolve it. Luckily some answers here led me to the resolution of my problem. I am using Microsoft Office 2016 and the clicking sound happens whenever I am using Word or Excel. It is not just a sound, it is like it is really clicking on something on the background because I can see the window reacts to it. It is quite annoying whenever I am saving a document because the save window will click out and all the text on the dialog box will be highlighted and eventually deleted when I type something. The issue was resolved after I sign out of office account.
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