Cannot open Word files after upgrading to Windows 10

Question

I downloaded Windows 10 and happily it went perfectly, and am very impressed with the W10. So far though I have had only one problem, which is that any Word doc or docx. files I forward from my work, or Word doc or docx. files I try to open from the portal we use at work (these are protected health information medical documents I need to analyze for my work) cannot open.

I have Office 2013 at home and work and never had this problem. Before the W10 download I could always open the ones from work but I'd get a quick dialogue box telling me my Office 2013 would update to the latest format when saving, and no problem.

Also, now, with W10 any Word file I create on my PC I can open without any difficulty or formatting update!

When I try to open the ones from work I get this message box:

"Word experienced an error trying to open the file.

Try these suggestions.

Check the file permission for the document or drive.

Make sure there is sufficient free memory or disk space [there is]

Open the file with the Text Recovery Converter"

You can open this box for more details but they instructions do not fit my Word version. The other problem is that this version of Office 2013 was a free replacement from Microsoft when there was an irreparable problem with the previously loaded Office 2010 Outlook. So, I have no back up CD if I tried to uninstall-reinstall the 2013 Office to see if this fixes anything.

Any help is greatly appreciated, especially since I need to open these work derived Word files when I am working form home -- which is too often!

Richard

Answer 1

Hi everyone,

This is Bryan from the Office team.  We are extremely sorry to learn that some of you are running into an issue with Office after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 where some of your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are failing to open with various error messages, such as:

• Word: “Word experienced an error trying to open the file”
• Excel: “This file is corrupt and cannot be opened”
• PowerPoint:
  • “The application was unable to start correctly"
  • “PowerPoint found a problem with <filename>"
  • “Sorry, PowerPoint can’t read <filename>"

We are actively working on a fix to resolve this issue, but in the meantime, if you are running into this issues the following workaround should help unblock you:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3086786

This issue is encountered when a document is opened in Protected View. Protected View is a security feature in Office that opens potentially untrusted files in a secure sandbox where users can read them without fear of the file taking over their computer.  You may have seen a number of posts that recommend solutions to disable or bypass Protected View to prevent this issue. We strongly discourage you from following these suggestions as it reduces the security of Office and leaves your computer open to attack from malicious users.

Once the workaround is completed, files which were previously causing this issue, should now open in Protected View allowing you to read them first within a secure sandbox and allow you to enable editing if you trust these files and need to work with them further.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused due to this issue!

Sincerely,

Bryan

Answer 2

Hello all,

We wanted to take a moment to thank you for coming to the Microsoft Community to find answers to issues with Office 2013 on Windows 10.

We have information available on some known issues.

In order to give your questions the attention they deserve, we are opening new threads that will focus on each of those errors individually:

If you are seeing the error ‘“This file is corrupt and cannot be opened”  when opening an Office File please review thisthread

If you are seeing the message "Office files Needs attention"  from OneDrive please review thisthread

If you are seeing the error "We're sorry, but Word has run into an error that is preventing it from working correctly." please review thisthread

*If you are having an issue not mentioned above,*please start a new thread so that we can investigate your issue.

In order to keep these threads productive and prevent fellow customer’s questions from being lost we ask that you please keep any posts made to these threads on topic and constructive.

We are going to go ahead and lock this thread to prevent questions being posted in the wrong area and not getting the attention they deserve.

Thank you for your understanding

Edit 9/14/2015:

We have published a new resource with some Known issues with Office and Windows 10.

Please visit this URL

Answer 3

See the Article “Why can’t I start my Office 2013 application at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/why-cant-i-start-my-office-2013-application-HA104011864.aspxIf that does not

help, then you might remove all traces of the Office installation by downloading the fixit from the following article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501

saving it to your computer and then running it.

Then reinstall Office by logging into www.office.com/myaccountwith your registered email address and click Install Office.

BEFORE REMOVING THE OFFICE INSTALLATION,  MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO LOG INTO YOUR ACCOUNT!

So this worked for me.

Run fixit.

Reboot.

install office from www.office.com/myaccount

Answer 4

Stuart,

I'm sorry this solution did not resolve your issue.  It's likely that you are into a different problem that is unrelated to Protected View.  I would like to assist you the best I can, so it would be helpful for your to elaborate on what you tried and what exactly is not working.  For instance, when you ran the icacls "%programfiles%\Microsoft Office 15" /grant *S-1-15-2-1:(OI)(CI)RX command as instructed in the KB article, did it say it successful processed 1 file?

Can you please help us track down what might be causing your specific issue?  Here's some follow up questions that will help:

• What version of Office are you using? Not sure the exact version but its Office 2013. I suspect the latest but I can't be sure since it won't open.
• Does Excel and PowerPoint also fail to open completely, or just when opening a file in Word? Yes excel and powerpoint fail to open with no errors. Same issue.
• Do all Word files fail to open or just some? I think you mean fail to open. Yes all Word files fail to open.
• Are the files on your local machine (eg: My Documents), OneDrive, email attachments, etc.? Doesn't matter where it is. The application won't open.
• Do you have any add-ins enabled? You can find this by going into an Office application, click on File, then Options.  Under Add-Ins, are there "Active Application Add-ins", and if so, which ones? Not that I know. Is there a way to start the application with these deactivated? (can't reach the settings)

Sincerely,

Bryan

Bryan what if I don't get an error? On either Word and Excel any file I try to open or opening Word or Excel programs, nothing happens. No error , no application opening , just blank.

Answer 5

When I ran the registry command, it said one file was processed successfully.

Initially all Microsoft office apps wouldn't work, so I figured if I uninstalled it and reinstalled it then maybe the issue would be resolved. But that only fixed excel and power point. Word wont work on any location on my computer, no file would open.

I don't have any add ins available and there's no version information. i downloaded this version of office from my office 365 account and I haven't been able to put in the product key to redeem my office 13 pro and I forgot the password for the account I used for the software. I'm just so annoyed by this.

I can only use Microsoft word online in office 365.