This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Over the past few days, I kept receiving the notification from Word that it needs updating, however, when I go to update it, I get the message
'Update error...Updates are temporarily unavailable, please try again in a few minutes.
Shortly after, this is followed by another pop-up that states 'There was a problem with the Microsoft Update Assistant and your recent work might be lost. We apologise for the inconvenience.'
It gives me the option to restart the update assistant, which I have done a number of times, however, I just get exactly the same problem over and over again. Is there anything I can do to fix this?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Did you use a tool like CleanMyMac the remove "universal Binaries"?
I had that a couple of days ago, downloading and re-install it from the Microsoft AutoUpdate Release history page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/release-history-microsoft-autoupdate
Good luck!
This issue is not related to anything like installing a Cleaner. All you need to do is to open your Mac Terminal and run the below script. It will most probably fix the issue. Cheers!
launchctl stop /Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist
launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist
I was having the same problem these past two weeks...I reinstalled Microsoft Autoupdate, I reinstalled all my Windows apps, still the same error message as soon as I tried to update: "Updates are temporarily unavailable. Please try again later".
Then....I remembered I had used the CCleaner app startup tool and a similar one in Clean My Mac to disable several startup items I thought, in my infinite wisdom, didn't need to be firing up from the get go. Silly me...
As I reviewed with both apps tonight the list of what was Disabled vs Active, I discover several items I had turned off a couple of weeks ago that had 'microsoft updater...' i them. I turned them all back on and voila! Auto update is working again.
I'd really like to apologize for saying nasty things about Microsoft and its products the past two weeks..None of this was there problem...I will do penance by denying myself chocolate for a week.. That should equal the score. I'm using Big Sur, latest update on a 2021 iMac 27.
Greg,
I can confirm that it isn't related to thinning and/or CleanMyMac!
I have issue (again) on my Mac, where AutoUpdate is excluded from any CleanMyMac actions. And I have it right infant of me on an iMac that didn't have any tool like this installed.
But downloading and reinstall fixed it (again) on both systems.
My initial post about CleanMyMac was, because I had Issues with other Apps (like MacUpdater) after thinning it with CleanMyMac. And the author told me: Known issue, please exclude it from any CleanMyMac actions.
The same workaround worked for them, so I tried it with Microsoft's AutoUpdate and it also fixed my issue. At least for a couple of days.
Anyway: Something Microsoft needs to investigate and fix.
Hi,
I tried this (downloaded the most recent version again) and it fixed the problem first attempt, so thanks for your reply.