Can't uninstall Office on Surface Pro X (ARM)

Question

Hello

I'm trying to install my Office 2016 Home and Student on my new Surface Pro X.
Which doesn't work and I'm directed to uninstall the currently installed Office-Version (365). But both uninstalling by hand or using Support and Recovery Assistent by MS are getting stuck, tryed running them for hours, just doesn't work.

I'm running Windows KB5018496

Any advice would be appreciated

Kind regards
Sock

Answer 1

Hi I G,

I’m Gunasekar and I will be happy to help you with your question, I am a Microsoft consumer like you.

I understand that you are having trouble with removing an application from the computer. Looks like you have tried the best possible solutions and it still didn't work. Let me share my knowledge on how to fix problems that block programs from being installed or removed.

1. Click the link below and Download the troubleshooter.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed-or-removed-cca7d1b6-65a9-3d98-426b-e9f927e1eb4d

2. Click Download troubleshooter and click Select keep anyway in the browser.
3. Run the Troubleshooter and select uninstall a program.
4. Select Office 365 and click Uninstall.

If you experience the same issue, you can Boot the PC in safe mode and then remove the Office applications.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234

Hope these methods should resolve the issue. If the issue persists, you can reset the PC to factory settings by keeping your personal files.

1. Click start and go to settings. Click System.
2. Select recovery.
3. Click reset the PC.
4. Click Keep my files and hit Local re-installation.

This will remove all the applications and you can install your Office package successfully.

I hope this information helps. If you have any questions, please let me know and I’ll be glad to assist you further.

Best regards Gunasekar N

Answer 2

Hi Sock

I'm Anna and I'd be happy to help you with your question. In this Forum, we are Microsoft consumers just like yourself.

Sorry for the trouble this might have caused. The information was right, you need to uninstall Office 365 if you intend to install Office 2016 so there won't be any conflict. But since both uninstalling methods you have tried are stuck, this could be a file system issue. Please try to restore and repair system files:

In the search box on the taskbar, type command prompt, then select Run as administrator from the list of options.

In the window that appears, type this command including spaces as shown: DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Press Enter. When the command operation has run successfully, you'll see a confirmation message from Command Prompt that says, “The restore operation completed successfully” or “The operation completed successfully”.
Note: If you don't see a confirmation message, retype the command and try again.

Next, type this command, including the space as shown: sfc /scannow

Press Enter. Wait until the SFC scan verification reaches 100% completion, and then close Command Prompt.

After that restart the PC and then use option 2 in the PC to uninstall Microsoft Office 365

https://support.microsoft.com/help/9dd49b83-264a-477a-8fcc-2fdf5dbf61d8

I hope this helps ;-), let me know if this is contrary to what you need, I would still be helpful to answer more of your questions.

Best Regards,

Anna

Give back to the community. Help the next person with this problem by indicating whether this answer solved your problem. Click Yes or No at the bottom.

Answer 3

Hi Anna

Thank you for your quick response.
I did everthing like you said, repair was no problem. But the SARA once again takes more then 40min to uninstall Office, so I guess it's stuck again.

Task Manager says SARA consumes only 3% CPU-Power and 100-150mb RAM if that is any useful information.

Any other ideas?

Thank you and kind regards
Sock

Answer 4

Hallo,

vielen Dank für deine Anfrage.

Fragen in diesem Forum werden in deutscher Sprache beantwaortet.

Führe eine manuelle Deinstallation durch: https://support.microsoft.com/de-de/office/manuelles-deinstallieren-von-office-4e2904ea-25c8-4544-99ee-17696bb3027b

Konnte der Vorgang erfolgreich abgeschlossen werden?

Answer 5

Hi Gunasekar

Thank you for your reply.
Your first option (including save mode) did not work.

In the end I went for the second option, a soft reset to factory settings, making sure to choose "remove installed app's", which got rid of all office applications.

Installing Office 2016 was a bit of a hassle, for anyone reading this:
You have to manually open the x64 Setup file to install office on an ARM machine, the general setup will produce an error every time.

Now everything works fine.
Thanks for the help to everybody

Kind regards
Sock