Why does the "Restart Office to apply privacy settings" not go away

This has suddenly appeared. I made no changes and restart does not cure it. Neither does 'fiddling' with the privacy settings as I have no idea what I am doing, This is beyond annoying.

Agreed!

Please stop asking users to do the debugging work for Microsoft. For you to give a user what amounts to an hour's worth of work without actually knowing that the work will resolve the problem is from a user's perspective, utterly stupid!

Asking us to spend a large amount of time debugging is not acceptable!\

Please DON"T just tell us that MS needs to work on this. Escalate to higher management. Report back to us on the time frame for addressing the problems.

Please focus on fixing the MS-created bugs that are so annoying and hamper productivity.

Dear RennieSchmid

We received a response from a user who was able to get back to normal after rolling back Office to version 16.0.17328.20142. We are currently testing this method, but we have received feedback from a user that it resolved the issue, so we suggest you try it.

1. Close all Office software, search for "Command Prompt" (or "cmd") in the "Start Menu", and right-click the mouse and select "Run as administrator";
2. In the command prompt enter the following code: cd %programfiles% \Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun, and then press Enter;
3. And then enter: Officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17328.20142

17328.20142 is the internal version number of the version you want to install, you can also choose an earlier version. Please refer to this link for the specific version number:

Update history for Microsoft 365 Apps (listed by date) - Office release notes | Microsoft Learn (In English)

We hope you find the above information helpful. Whether or not it works, please let us know by replying. Thank you for your understanding.

Best Regards,

Tracy | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

It appears this method works, but only temporarily — the "restart required" message re-appears, often within a matter of hours, and definitely after the next time the computer is restarted.

Is there any hope at all that MS will provide a fix for this, which seems to be a consequence of the most recent Win 11 update?

aghhhhh - same for me , error has returned :(

Thank you for responding.

The version: Microsoft® Outlook® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2406 Build 16.0.17726.20078) 64-bit

The issue has remained for at least 3 version updates. I have uninstalled Office and used the tool the ensure that it is fully uninstalled. Two MS technicians also took control and did the same.

There may be a problem with my MS licensing, but it only shows up in Office products.

I have a Surface Pro 7+ but it also occurs on a desktop.

My resolution is standard for a Surface Pro.

Rennie