Reinstall Office 2016 in a Windows 7 machine

Hello,Phill D NC

Welcome to the Microsoft community!

I have realized that you are now unable to reinstall your Office 2016 in Window 7.

Since the installation path of Office is fixed and cannot be changed, Office cannot be installed when there are anomalies in the local files of Office, or when there are residual files that cause incorrect access to the data, as well as when there are problems with the system and the system registry.

Meanwhile your current problem is exactly the same as an Italian thread I encountered last month, though that user supposedly solved it by using an offline installer. I've also provided some options appropriately, so if you can, you can use the translation tool to check it out

Microsoft Office 2016 installation failure - Microsoft Community

Here is the installer: http://officecdn.microsoft.com/PR/492350f6-3a01-4f97-b9c0-c7c6ddf67d60/media/en-us/HomeStudentRetail.img

Feel free to post back if you need further assistance. 

Thank you for your understanding and patience and I look forward to hearing from you.

Ryan - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Hi Phil, You need to reinstall Office 2016 (ON SAME COMPUTER) using the Microsoft Account associated with your Office 2016, that is the same Microsoft Account (email address) that you used with the Product Key to redeem your Office for the first time.

See if you can sign in with that email address here: https://account.microsoft.com/services You should see an install link for your Office 2016. Similar to below:

Hi Phill,

I feel your pain! I understand that Microsoft does tend to remove out of support operating systems, even from older versions of Office, but seeing as you have already installed it, you should be able reinstall. I would just like to confirm:

• When you signed in to your Microsoft Account, did you see the Office 2016 purchase listed?
• When you download Office, are you asked if you want a 32-bit or 64-bit installer? (Modern computers are all 64bit, which just means they run with more advanced technology. Windows 7 supports both 32 and 64bit computers, but a 32bit computer cannot run 64bit software, whereas a 64bit computer is backwards compatible with 32bit)

Please let me know and we can continue to try and troubleshoot this. Worst case scenario, you may need to call Microsoft support directly and ask them for more help, although they may just give you the same answer about W7 not being supported.

Please let me know!

Hello Phill!

Assuming that you already had Office 2016 installed on the said Windows 7 PC (hence "reinstall"), I am surprised! Microsoft support says that you can get a Kernel32.dll error because you're using an unsupported operating system, and as stated here, one of Office 2016's requirements is Windows 10, Windows 11 or, Windows Server 2016.

Still, since you were able to install it before, I would recommend trying to reinstall again, by following the instructions here. May I also ask, what led you to uninstall Office in the first place, and, was it working beforehand? Please let me know!

If the above doesn't work, let me know and we can attempt further troubleshooting.

I hope this helps, let me know!

I installed Office 2016 in 2021. 2016 is the latest Office version to work on W7, that is why I did not install 2021 at the time. MS no longer tells you things will work on anything before W10, but that doesn't mean it won't work, it just means they won't guarantee it works.

WHY: I had my machine hang up at startup on an update. Nothing I tried would work. So I was forced to go to a restore point to get it out of the install hangup. The problem with that is this machine will not keep any restore point unless it is generated during a backup. No critical update RP, no manual RP, nothing but backup RPs. They will be there at first, but within a few hours they just disappear. For example, I had 9 restore points 2 hours ago with all of these updates, now I have 3. I have never been able to figure out why, though I truthfully have not put a HUGE effort into figuring out why.

Anyway, the most recent RP I had was from 2021, 2 days before Office 2016 was installed. This was created because Office had crashed on me and I was working on figuring out a solution. So I lost Office 2021 and a bunch of other updates when I went back to that RP. It has been a fun day trying to get things updated, as the default update for most everything will no longer work on W7. I am sure I will continue to have issues as I use the machine and find other missing updates.

BTW: I followed the instructions you linked already. This is where I was given the executable causing the issues that brought me here.

Hello Phill!

Assuming that you already had Office 2016 installed on the said Windows 7 PC (hence "reinstall"), I am surprised! Microsoft support says that you can get a Kernel32.dll error because you're using an unsupported operating system, and as stated here, one of Office 2016's requirements is Windows 10, Windows 11 or, Windows Server 2016.

Still, since you were able to install it before, I would recommend trying to reinstall again, by following the instructions here. May I also ask, what led you to uninstall Office in the first place, and, was it working beforehand? Please let me know!

If the above doesn't work, let me know and we can attempt further troubleshooting.

I hope this helps, let me know!