Word is slow to respond version 16.85 in unknown version of Mac OS

Anonymous
2024-05-17T19:39:47+00:00

Split from this thread.

Exactly the same problem here:

  1. Problem appears after update to Version 16.85 (24051214) Microsoft® Word for Mac
  2. Problem is linked to spellchecker: any use of it triggers this complete freeze. Note that spellchecker can very easily be triggered incidentally, as shown in image above from Charles M1: The spelling popup balloon already crashes Word.
  3. The only way to stop the programme is through a Force Quit. Microsoft Word gets completely stuck, as described previously. To great despair, restarting Word does not trigger the usual Recovery and everything is lost. I could not locate any recovery file.
  4. It has nothing to do with OneDrive: the Word document was not located on OneDrive nor being synced through OneDrive. Completely shutting down OneDrive does not resolve the issue, it still happens..

So the problem seems to be directly caused by some change in the spelling module in the latest Word version for Mac.

Sincerely, Stan

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | MacOS

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.

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Answer accepted by question author
Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2024-06-11T19:54:41+00:00

After the issue was reported in the forums, Microsoft recognized that this was a bug in Office for Mac. See the reply by Jim Gordon on the first page of the long thread at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/word-is-lagging-on-my-mac/a520fea1-564f-4118-b73b-ada1d8a0e9ef.

As far as I know, nobody has suggested that Apple was to blame for this.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-05-27T08:05:08+00:00

    All schools in Denmark is in the examination period. This is causing a lot of troubles for us.

    We would appreciate if Microsoft could fix this very soon.

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  2. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 437.7K Reputation points
    2024-05-26T23:11:58+00:00

    Version 16.85.2 has been pushed out for Word. Apply that & see if things improve.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-26T19:26:50+00:00

    throw out the word 16.85 version, find the older 16.84 version (cut and paste the link below), download it, install it, and pray for the lag to be gone.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac

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