An interesting experience with Office Click-to-Run is that trusting it to install updates the night before a conference where you are a speaker. I’m writing this blog post while Alberto Ferrari is delivering its part of the preconference training day at SQL Bits about how to create a complete solution in Power BI. But I think it’s important to share.

Symptoms:

  • Excel crashes when you click Save As
  • Word crashes when you click Save As
  • Outlook crashes when you click File Office Account
  • Power Point crashes when you click Save As

In a word: Office no longer works well and crashes often.

Yesterday I installed the latest update of Office using the Click-to-Run distribution: it’s not Windows Updates, so I cannot check in Windows Update what are the updates installed. You have to check the version you installed and this could be hard if the window that should show the number makes the application crashing.

However, after some investigation:

  • I took a look at the page that shows the versions released for click-to-run: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/office-2013-click-to-run
  • I had the version 15.0.4631.1002 – July 2014 update (http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2980001)
  • I wanted to revert back to the previous version (15.0.4623.1003 – June 2014 update)
  • I followed instructions described here: https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/172/t/251109.aspx
    • Open an administrative command prompt, then run one of the next two commands based on your version:
      • For an Office installation in a 32-bit version of Windows:
        cd %programfiles%Microsoft Office 15ClientX86
      • For an Office installation in a 64-bit version of Windows
        cd %programfiles%Microsoft Office 15ClientX64
    • Then run the following command:
      officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=15.0.4623.1003

I think that this procedure could be useful in the future in case any similar issue will happen again (hopefully not…)

Lessons learned: never install *any* update the day before speaking at a conference. Not only Windows Updates, but also Office Click-to-Run updates…