From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

Repairing Microsoft Office

From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Repairing Microsoft Office

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- [Instructor] Microsoft Office is a tremendous productivity tool, and like all software, it occasionally has problems. In anticipation of this situation, Microsoft has provided a way for you to fix mistakes and problems that may crop up in Office. Your first stop on the repair journey is to check the product's information in any Office app, such as Excel here. Click the File tab and choose Account from the menu. Ensure that updates are automatically downloaded and installed as shown here. If not, if you instead see a notice that updates are available and ready to install, click this button and choose Update Now. You're prompted to save any of your work if an update is available. Then you can wait as the latest version of Office is downloaded and installed. You may be prompted to save your work and Office may need to close for the process to continue, but when it's done, you'll see an updates were installed window, just like this. Click close and hopefully the update addressed whatever issues you were suffering from. And by the way, if you don't see that close window, be sure to check behind other windows. Sometimes it does hide itself. If problems persist, you can try repairing Office. This job takes place in the Settings app. Press the Windows + I keyboard shortcut to bring up the Settings app. Choose the apps category. Choose installed apps in Windows 11. In Windows 10, the list is presented right away. You can scroll to find the Microsoft 365 Office app. Click this overflow and choose Advanced Options. In Windows 10, you just click the app's tile to find the advanced options item. Scroll down the window to locate the repair button. Click this button to have Office diagnose itself and potentially fix an issue. Choosing this option doesn't change any of your office settings. Now, the other option, reset, performs a more aggressive repair operation, but it removes any settings you've made. So try the Reset button as a last resort, which effectively reinstalls Office 365. I've had to use this feature a few times and it worked beautifully, addressing some weird issues that I otherwise couldn't fix. It may not resolve all issues with a specific document or worksheet, but it's available and worth a try when things get dire in the Microsoft Office app.

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