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I am suddenly receiving this message pop up whenever I open or close MSWord document on my Macbook Pro: Microsoft Basic unexpected error 50001. I attempted to log on to a chat with tech support. But whenever I reply in the chat it is not delivered. I see the chat bot asking a question, but they're not receiving my response.
Is there a phone number I can call to get help?
Michael
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
What is your macOS version?
Is your office product purchased from Microsoft or from Apple? You have Microsoft 365 personal or family subscription, right?
I have a personal 365 subscription. I'm not sure where I purchased, it's renewed automatically.
If it is a Microsoft Visual Basic error message, the underlying cause is likely a defective add-in. You can try moving .dotm files out of Word's Startup folder on your Mac.
I would like for you to uninstall the apps and reinstall.
However, it is important to know where you signed up for your Office subscription because the install source needs to match the purchase source.
Can you go to https://account.live.com > Subscriptions, is your Microsoft 365 listed here? If so, did it say anything about redeemed via purchase from Apple, or something like that?
I did as you suggested and I do not find any mention of it being purchased from Apple. I have an annual subscription at $99/year.
I have uninstalled MS Word, all of the MS 365 suite in fact, and have re-downloaded it all back. I am still having the same error message when I open a document in MSWord. Help!
Ok, so it is from Microsoft directly.
On macOS Tahoe:1. Quit Microsoft Word completely.
Open Finder. Press Command + Shift + G to open Go to Folder. Paste this path:
~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Startup/Word
Press Return. Create a temporary folder on your Desktop, then move any .dotm files from the Word folder into it. Reopen Word and check whether the problem is resolved.
I did as instructed. Unfortunately, the Word folder was empty. So no .dotm files to move.
Open Word and check Word > Preferences > File Locations > Startup to see whether a different Startup folder has been configured.
It has a "modify" or "reset" button there when I go to startup. When I double click on startup it wants to save a file.
You do not need to save anything there. The Modify button is only used to select a different Startup folder. Since the default Startup folder was empty, let’s check the Normal template next.
~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates
Move it to your Desktop. Do not delete it yet. Reopen Word, open and close a document, and check whether the error still appears.
Word will automatically create a new Normal.dotm file. Please let me know the result.
I did as you suggested, opened and closed a new Word doc but got the same error message. Caramba!
hmmGo here this time.
~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences
Do you see com.microsoft.Word.plist ? If so, move it to desktop, and restart Word and test again.
There were two com.microsoft.Word.plist. I moved them both and tested again. No luck. I've been going through cache files too to delete things that might be causing it. I'm only picking files within Microsoft folders. Others I should do perhaps?
Please do not delete any more cache or Library files for now. Deleting unrelated files could create additional problems.
Let’s check whether Word is loading an add-in from another location:
If anything is listed, do not open or save it.
Thank you. The screenshot shows the likely cause. Word is loading an Adobe Acrobat add-in named linkCreation.dotm from a different Startup folder.
First, uncheck linkCreation.dotm, click OK, then quit Word completely.
Next, open Finder. Click Go > Go to Folder. Paste this path:
/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office365/User Content.localized/Startup/Word/
Locate linkCreation.dotm and move it to your Desktop. Do not delete it yet.
Reopen Word and test opening and closing a document.
Please let me know whether the error is now gone.
Finally! That worked! Thank you so much for sticking with me to fix this. I appreciate it. Anything else I should do to avoid this in the future?
You are welcome.
You can leave it on the Desktop for now. or delete it. It is not required for Word itself to work. You can still create PDFs directly in Word by going to File > Save As and selecting PDF as the file format.