Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | MacOS
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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This is still happening on MacOS 26.6.1
Technical Bug Report: Critical Memory Leak in Word for Mac
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John
10
Reputation points
Technical Bug Report: Critical Memory Leak in Word for Mac
Environment Details:
Hardware: MacBook Pro (M4 Chip)
Physical Memory: 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD
Operating System: macOS Tahoe 26.3
Application: Microsoft Word for Mac v16.106.1 (Build 26021521)
Problem Description
Microsoft Word is exhibiting a severe memory leak, with the Microsoft Word process consuming up to 36.42 GB of memory in Activity Monitor. This exceeds physical RAM by over 200%, forcing the system into critical "Red" Memory Pressure and causing system-wide UI lag, application hangs, and thermal throttling.
Observed Symptoms
RAM Consumption: Rapid escalation from ~800MB at launch to >30GB within 30 minutes of usage.
Performance Impact: Significant "typing lag" (500ms+ delay), spinning wait cursors (beachballing), and Microsoft Teams/Outlook performance degradation due to resource contention.
Swap Usage: System reporting high "Swap Used" (20GB+), potentially impacting SSD longevity.
Troubleshooting Steps Taken (Non-Resolutive)
Cleared ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word.
Reset Global Template (Normal.dotm).
Disabled "Connected Experiences" and Microsoft Editor background services.
- Validated system fonts via Font Book (no corruption found).
Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | MacOS
3 answers
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Vincent Chen 0 Reputation points2026-07-07T12:29:52.77+00:00 Hi, have you found the solution?
I also experienced Microsoft Word memory leak issue with my MAC. Both my MAC and Word were updated to the latest version. Within minutes, memory will get to double digit GB, and within 30 minutes, the system will crash, a message will pop up and says out of memory.
I have no choice but use PC instead of Mac for word document processing. This is annoying and a critical bug. Basically this means you are not able to use Word on Mac to do anything....
I tried all the solution I can find on the internet but none of them worked.
Tahoe 26.5.2 M1 Macbook Pro
Word 16.110.2
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Stefan Blom 351.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator2026-07-07T17:53:07.9466667+00:00 It has been suggested elsewhere in the forum that keeping the Navigation pane closed improves the situation. I am not sure if that works for everybody who has encountered this problem, though.
It is important that you send feedback to Microsoft, as John recommended in February. You can use the feedback facility in Word for Mac. You can also post feedback in the portal at https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/forum/fb6d67e3-301c-ec11-b6e7-0022481f8472 . The advantage of using the portal is that other people see your post and they can vote for it.
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John Korchok 235.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator2026-02-21T17:11:07.34+00:00 To report a bug, please choose Help>Feedback>Report a problem. Include the detail you have posted above. Submitting sends the report to the PowerPoint for Mac team.