Run Time Error '53'

Question

It is annoying that I get this error after I loaded the 365 Premium yesterday and it does not go away till I press 'End' over 5 times. This occurs only when I open Excel , word files. Any help and guidance will be appreciated. I tried opening Microsoft Technical support 3 times yesterday and today and no one called me or came in a chat but strangely the ticket gets closed without even talking to me.

Answer 1

Hi, Mark-4932

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Sorry for this unwanted experience that you're encountering. That “Run-time error ‘53’” pop-up is almost always triggered by an Adobe PDFMaker add-in that Office tries to load at startup, but the referenced Adobe component (MacPDFM) is missing or has moved after an Adobe or Office update.

Here are some suggestions you can try:

1) Remove the Adobe startup add-ins (most effective)

This works because it stops Word/Excel from calling the broken Adobe macro each time you open a file.

Quit Word, Excel, PowerPoint first. Then in Finder, hold Option > Go > Library. Open:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content.localized/Startup.localized/

Inside the app folders, move these files to the Trash (or to Desktop if you prefer a safer “undo”):

• Word: linkCreation.dotm
• Excel: SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam (if present)
• PowerPoint: SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam (if present)

If those folders are empty, Adobe often moved the files to the system Library (Macintosh HD level). Check:

/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office365/User Content.localized/Startup/ (you may need an admin password to delete).

2) Disable the add-in from inside Office (quick confirmation)

This works because it removes the “load at startup” instruction even if the file still exists somewhere.

• Word: Tools > Templates and Add-ins… > remove or uncheck linkCreation.dotm.
• PowerPoint: Tools > PowerPoint Add-ins… > uncheck “SaveAsAdobePDF”.
• Excel: Tools > Excel Add-ins… > uncheck and remove “Save as Adobe PDF”.

3) If you use Acrobat 2020 on an M1/M2/M3 Mac, try Rosetta (specific case)

This can help because the Adobe plugin may behave better in Intel-compatibility mode on Apple silicon.

Hope this helps. Feel free to get back if you need further assistance.

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Answer 2

This is an Adobe issue caused by their MacPDFM add-in. Contact Adobe Support for correcting it based on the configuration of your Mac.