Microsoft "Updating Office, please wait a moment..." splash keeps popping up after opening Outlook

Question

I have been redirected here from the Microsoft Community site. I recently upgraded from office 2019 pro to 2021 pro. Unfortunately, now when I open Outlook it triggers an "Updating Office, please wait a moment..." splash popup.

The decision to upgrade was taken following the unsuccessful repair of the 2019 install (caused by an error with Word, I believe this was in turn caused by corrupted data on my SSD which has since been rectified). To do this, I initially uninstalled 2019 using the standard windows uninstall process. The uninstall was not smooth, presumably due to the corrupted data but the programs had disappeared so I assumed all was well. Then installed 2021 using the install provided by the downloaded link provided at purchase. No errors came up from the installation process.

Outlook appears to be the only Office app that triggers it. After 30 seconds it disappears then it reappears 30 seconds later. The cycle is endless, even when Outlook is closed. The only 2 ways I have found to stop it are to reboot the computer or close down all Microsoft office related programs.

Nothing freezes and I can still use outlook fine. The splash can be closed but just reappears again on the next 30-second cycle. It is very distracting and driving me nuts.

I have tried the following.

• Making sure it is fully updated to the latest version.
• Turning off office updates.
• Opening Outlook in both Safe and Administrator mode
• Repair the installation. Both Quick and Online versions.
• Completely removing office and previous versions using SARA and reinstalling

I have tried disabling click to run in Services.msc to see what it would do. It just started to come out with 0x426-0x0 error messages in place of the updating splashes every 30 seconds.

My assumption is it is a bad registry key leftover from the previous install of Office 2019 but I am not sure where it is located.

Currently, I am hoping for a fix that does not involve reinstalling windows. Preferably one that stops the cycle from being triggered but I will settle for stopping the splash screen from popping up and letting the process cycle in the background as it does not take any significant resources. Any ideas would be most appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi @Allart ,

Welcome to our forum!

According to your description, i notice that you have uninstalled Office 2019 and updated Office 2021 to the latest version, right?

If so, i notice that you have done several troubleshooting methods but nothing was found. In order to further confirm if the issue is related to current windows profile, it's suggested that you could sign out your windows and use another account to sign in to check if there're any differences.

If it doesn't work, i'm afraid that you need to reinstall Windows to return your PC to a cleaner state and install a new Office 2021. (If you are ready to do this, please remember to back up your data).

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