Office programs do not work without admin rights.

Question

Office programs never run unless "Run as administrator" is selected from the context menu, I edited the shortcuts to make them "Run as admin" by default and it works, but it is inconvenient as this is not the normal case, and then I recently found that Office files, e.g. Excel sheets, Word documents, etc. never actually open, which means I have to open the corresponding program and open that file from the relevant program, this is the 1st time that happened to me, though it used to work perfectly fine previously.
I believe it is a recent update that caused this issue.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hello Yuhao,

Thanks for the response, I use only 1 account on this device, which is an administrator that is linked to my Microsoft account, and it was working perfectly fine, then recently it happened out of no where, I did not install any third party apps recently nor did any changes to my account.

For the following part:
"According your description, the problem may have nothing to do with your Office, it is more likely a permission problem with your local account. Please check the permissions of the local account you use to log in to Windows.

1. Select Start > Settings > Accounts.
2. Under Family & other users, select the account owner name (you should see "Local Account" below the name), then select Change account type. **Note:**If you choose an account that shows an email address or doesn't say "Local account", then you're giving administrator permissions to a Microsoft account, not a local account."

I did follow these steps and it showed me that I already am an administrator.

And for the file extension / type association it is set to run the corresponding office program, all of them has the relevant Microsoft office program assigned to them, so unfortunately that did not solve the problem either.

Thanks again for taking the time to look into my issue.

Answer 2

365 should be installed under a win user that has full admin rights

365 has to be run as admin for correct functionality

Thanks for the reply, I am using Microsoft office 2021, not 365.

And yea I did install it with "Administrator account", and I run it in an administrator account, it just never opens unless I Right click the icon, and select "Run as administrator" from the context menu.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

Answer 3

That seems strange. I suggest you uninstall this Office 2021 and then re-install it again with the account you are using now. Before re-installing, be sure to back up your important files. You can re-download your Office from www.office.com. If you're not already signed in, sign in first. After signing in, follow the steps that match the type of account you signed in with to complete downloading and installing.

Or you can also download office from Microsoft Store and then re-install it.

If you are having trouble with downloading, installing and activating, see Troubleshoot installing Office (microsoft.com) for help.

Answer 4

365 should be installed under a win user that has full admin rights

365 has to be run as admin for correct functionality

Answer 5

Hello, Yousif Samir

Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

According your description, the problem may have nothing to do with your Office, it is more likely a permission problem with your local account. Please check the permissions of the local account you use to log in to Windows.

1. Select Start > Settings > Accounts.
2. Under Family & other users, select the account owner name (you should see "Local Account" below the name), then select Change account type. **Note:**If you choose an account that shows an email address or doesn't say "Local account", then you're giving administrator permissions to a Microsoft account, not a local account.

As for "I recently found that Office files, e.g. Excel sheets, Word documents, etc. never actually open", please check default programs in Windows. Enter ms-settings:defaultapps in your browser to check it. If the default programs are not correct, please change them according to your needs.

If the issue persists, please let me know, and I'll keep working on it.

Best regards,

Yuhao Li| Microsoft Community Support Specialist