MS Word 365 - Ribbon and menu bar disappears intermittently

Question

Hi all, I have several customers who seem to have issues with MS Word 365 in an RDS environment. Randomly the ribbon and menu bar will disappear leaving just the body content and a ruler. The ribbon and menu are replaced with grey fill. Closing and opening MS Word has no effect. Starting a new instance while the corrupt instance is still running brings the ribbon and menu onto the new instance, otherwise a log off session is required.
Have tried the "RenderForMonitorDpi" registry key (Optimize for compatibility) and disabled hardware graphics acceleration as per some of the other forums however the problem persists. Seems to have been introduced through a patch sometime in late 2021 and latest Semi-annual channel release has not fixed it. Currently running Version 2108, Build 14326.20910 Click-to-run.
Anyone found a solution to this?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi @Jonno Geor

Thanks for your screenshot, I want to confirm that are three dots in the upper corner? If yes, you can click this icon to show the Ribbon.

If not, I would suggest your users try following steps to have a check.

• If these users are using multiple monitors, it is recommended to just connect a primary monitor temporarily and disconnect others to have a check.
• Do other Office apps, such as Excel and PowerPoint encounter with the same issue?
  Please hold on Ctrl key, click or double-click Word icon, until Word asks you start Word in safe mode, then please release Ctrl key and click "Yes". Safe Mode can help us troubleshoot the COM Add-ins and startup items.
• I also suggest you reinstall the graphics driver.
  If there are other versions, you can also replace the existing one.

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Answer 2

I have Word 365. What worked for me was to go to Control Panel, then Programs and Features, then right click on Microsoft 365 and select Change and then choose quick repair. This works for a while, although eventually I run into the same problem again.

Answer 3

Good Morning,

I am experiencing a similar problem in our envoirnment too.

Seems to be randomly occuring for us, we are using citrix and it is only on Word where this happens.

Killing their word process and reopening work fixes the problem temporarily but cant find a proper fix.

Microsoft® Word for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2202 Build 16.0.14931.20602) 64-bit is the version we are running.

Have you been able to find a resolution at all @Jonno Geor ?

Thanks you in advance for your time.

Answer 4

We use Citrix and O365 and it helped for us when I deactivated the file preview in Windows Explorer, since it opened the WINWORD.EXE task in the background and as soon as a user viewed a Word document and so the task got stuck.

Answer 5

I have the same problem. We are in a small office and this issue happens randomly on a number of PCs. Running the latest version of Microsoft 365. Logout/reboot is the only way to temporarily fix it for us.