Word and Excel will not save

Question

Word and Excel will not save

D H 40

Neither Word nor Excel will save. I try 3 different ways and nothing happens. If I move the cursor around, sometimes I get a spinning beachball. This doesn't happen all the time; about 90%. I save all my work to my local drive.

I use a 2021 iMac with M1 chip; 16G ram; OS 15.6

Word is Version 16.102.2 (25102623) with a current 365 subscription.

Thanks!

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Answer 1

Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 437.7K

File management operations are functions of the OS. Your cited version of Sequoia is significantly behind. Version 15.7.1 is the current release. Update the OS & run Disk Utility - First Aid on the startup volume.

If the behavior continues start the Mac in Safe Mode to help determine whether some background process is inhibiting performance.

D H 40 Reputation points

2025-11-13T02:52:28.1233333+00:00

I removed and performed a clean install of the office programs (which was tedious but did include removing the plots files plus all Microsoft-related files. Upon restarting with the fresh software I could again save. Thank you for your advice!

I thought I was updating the OS but obviously you were correct about that! I believe the MS reinstall was enough to fix the problem but now with the OS updated it seems to act more reliably . Thank you for catching that! I also found that the Mac version does not allow setting a “default “ save folder and the software is intended to save to Onedrive. I prefer to keep all my files locally (and it fortunately retains the last save location) so I can accept that. At least I now have the current OS!

Answer 2

Hi,

Were you able to try this: quit Word and Excel completely, then restart your Mac before reopening your files? Sometimes, the apps hang due to temporary permission or cache issues. You can also try saving a new blank document to your desktop to see if the problem occurs outside your usual folder, or run "Disk Utility > First Aid" to check for file system errors. If that doesn’t work, try resetting the Office preferences by moving the com.microsoft plist files from your Library folder.

Have you recently updated macOS or Office before this started? And does the saving issue happen only with older files or also with newly created ones?

Kind regards,