Forum Discussion
Office 365 apps are closing randomly on MacOS
Hi,
is anyone currently experiencing issues with all MS Office 365 apps (Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, Word) in the way that they close all at once, randomly, and you are probably losing work due to the unexpected shutdown.
I got a new MacBook Pro with M3 Max with Sonoma 14.5 recently, and after using it for a few hours, it seems that sporadically, all O365 apps mentioned above that are open at the moment are closing all at once, randomly, without any error message, without any prior notice or any user interaction. ALL other applications except Office are working fine, also OneDrive and MS Teams stay open without any issues. After using the MacBook for a few days, it seems that it's maybe more likely to happen when the Mac is going to standby / lid closed and is woken up afterwards?
Steps I already tried without any change of the behavior, each also including a complete reboot of the machine, in the following order.
- Updating Office with the MS AutoUpdater application
- Simple uninstall of MS Office applications
- Reinstallation by using a clean new O365 download
- Manual uninstallation using https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/uninstall-office-for-mac-eefa1199-5b58-43af-8a3d-b73dc1a8cae3
- Clean reinstallation after complete manual uninstallation
- After uninstalling again, I tried to install it manually with deselection of the MS Defender which is included in the O365 installer package (Defender is already installed by default on the Mac).
- Renaming the MacBooks hostname from XXX-MBP-ABC123DEF to XXXMBPABC123DEF and renaming the SSD name from Macintosh HD to MacintoshHD.
- Complete wipe of the MacBook with my IT department and reinstall / setup of the machine, followed by starting auto updater and updating everything to the latest version.
None of these steps is working, and Office keeps shutting down / crashing without any prior notice at random times, most likely after a sleep. It is enough to just open up some office applications and leave the Mac alone, after return you will find the Mac with all office applications closed (except Teams and Onedrive as mentioned above).
Furthermore, I already set the network availability during sleep within my energy saving settings:
- Wake for network access from "Only on Power adapter" to "Always"
Does anyone have any further ideas for analysis or a solution?
On my private MBP with M1 Pro and Sonoma 14.5 there are no issues at all.
Thank you!!!
Michael1240, the fix is done by there side on the back end of Intune since it is Intune that is causing the issue with the Microsoft 365 apps for MacOS package. I changed my assignment on that from Required to Available for Enrolled Devices and it stopped everything from crashing. I will put it back once it is confirmed it is resolved. Now in my portal it is showing my machine, another machine I enrolled, and 2 other machines that are showing pending Install status and it was not like that yesterday afternoon when I made the change. They were all showing as installed. I hope they fix this, but it won't be done until 2PM EST today. Fingers are crossed
95 Replies
- If you had not already wiped your device, there are tools that will remote all office components from your device, "uninstalling" an application on macOS is usually little more than dragging the app to the trash and does not actually remove the sqlite databases or any of the plists which usually cause the app to crash. Reinstalling macOS would remove anything device side being the cause of the issue.
With you already wiping the device (and not using timemachine) I'm betting the issue is not on your Mac, it's with your Office account or something your employer is doing with MDM like a broken update function or SSO function, or possibly broken conditional access policies from Entra.
Since this is an employer owned device/managed, open a ticket with your IT department. Anything left to troubleshoot is all console side.- You’re quick pointing to office accounts or MDM/Update/SSO functions/Policies when multiple people report this issue happening since the last office update or since them installing new machines.
But you’re right, local IT is always the first go to point, just don’t forget that other people here are already those IT department admins that you are talking about. 😉- Absolutely correct, however many other people are organizations are not having this issue so it's not a global thing. It could be a unique configuration that is not deployed/used by everyone, or something limited to the region OP and affected others are hosted out of.
Honestly, hats off to OP for troubleshooting as much as they have since they look to be a user and not IT Support "proper". Though, considering they reinstalled office themselves, and assisted with the reimage, I am figuring their Mac Managment and Configuration is not very far along or well realized. I'd bet the devices are largely user supported unfortunately.
- Exact same problem for us here on the 3 mac we have since we have enrolled them into company portal (linked with Intune).
Outlook (One note, word, excel...) are closing randomly and we loose what we were doing. It's like the system try to push again everything, I don't know. It's very annoying and we are waiting impatienly that it being solved by microsoft.
It generates tons of logs each time it happens into /Users/USERNAME/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook/Data/Library/Logs/Diagnostics/OUTLOOK/
We tried activating BETA update on microsoft auto update but it changes nothing... - Hi all,
Here is a small update regarding my testing about reverting Office Suite to a previous version for one of our MAC OS users.
Yesterday I reverted the user's office Suite from version 16.86 (24060916) to May update version 16.85 (24051214)
( and disabled MAU, Microsoft auto update )
Before this revert was done our user experienced a random shutdown of the office apps.
But now with an older version our user has been able to work for about 6 hours without any random shutdowns.
I will keep monitoring it and keep updating Microsoft in my support ticket.
FYI:
MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
OS build : 14.5 ( Sonoma )Jquality This is at least some good news for a workaround, please keep on with your reports.
Did you uninstall the newest office version by simply moving the applications to trash or did you do some extended uninstall & cleanup routine?
I have been trying using Rosetta and this won't help at all. At first glance it seemed to be stable when I used it for an hour or so, but then yesterday evening I experienced a shutdown again.
Michael1240
I did a clean uninstall by simply moving the apps to the trash bin and then installing an earlier version of Office Suite.
If you're going to downgrade to an earlier version keep in mind to disable MAU ( Microsoft Auto Update ) immediately when you have re-installed the apps.
But yeah, not 100% sure that the downgrade works or not but so far so good.
Hi All,
We are having the same issue... All our Macs are managed by Intune.
The installed Office package is the default one that can be selected out of the box in Intune, the package is not created by us.
What I discovered from doing some testing for our environment.
- This doesn't affect devices were the Office package was installed a few weeks ago -> these devices have the package marked as "Installed".
- Only occurs on device that are deployed since the last weeks -> these devices have the package marked as "Pending for install".
There are multiple devices where the Office package is not detected as installed, however the Office apps are present on the device.
I was able to reproduce the issue by forcing synchronizations. Intune will try to reinstall the Office package. This results in closing the Office apps (Word, Outlook, Excel,...). The "New Teams" app is not affected in this case (no testing done with OneDrive).
I removed the app assignment on the users where it was installed but not detected as installed. Intune will not retry installing the Office applications which ends the random closures.
This is offcourse not a solution for the issue but can help to cover some time until Microsoft has fixed this issue.
If I find someting new on this matter, I will post it here 🙂
Kr,
Pedro
PedroVervaeke I can confirm your findings. Mine is also pending install status in Intune. I'll be bringing this up with our Microsoft CSM today.
I can confirm this as well on my end with Intune. Both of our affected users are pending install.
- Same issue
MPB, 2021 M1 Pro w/32GB RAM
Occurred on Sequoia b2, thought it was the beta causing the issue, fresh installed Sonoma 14.5, same thing happened.
Defender installed and managed by IT
Company Portal also installed and managed by IT
Filevault also enforced, although can confirm the issue occurred BEFORE the policy kicked in an applied after the 14.5 downgrade. - Hi again,
I have now been in contact with MS support regarding the issue.
They believe it could be an issue with the latest office updates or the latest updates from Apple.
Microsoft said that I should try to revert the office package to an earlier version which I have now done by trying out this build (released May 14, 2024, 16.85 (24051214) and disable MAU ( Microsoft auto update )
Will come back with an update if this work-around works.- Can I know how they got you a previous version of the office package and how did they turn off MAU
- Ah great, well I will try out this version anyway.
Yes here is a link to where you can download earlier versions of the MS Office suite
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac
I disabled the MAU through a policy in Endpoint/ Intune that I created earlier for our MAC OS users.
Not 100% sure how to disable it manually,
Maybe if you start an office app and head over to Help in the top menu bar and press " check for updates, then MAU will pop up and I believe it should be a check box in the MAU window saying " Automatically keep my Microsoft apps up to date " un-check that one. if you reverting to an older version I would also guess that the check box will be enabled again not sure.
- So as I got my new MBP exactly Wednesday last week and experienced the issues right away and some of you are reporting the first occurrence in your orgs around that time we might find out which updates have been provided by MS maybe right before or around last week.
If someone knows how to rollback to previous versions it might be worth a shot but any application could be the culprit. Otherwise we might need further logging by MS via one of those support tickets.Our case has gone to premier support today. Will keep you all updated
Sysadmin100 Just had the issue occurring again, this time with an error message from excel. I don't understand it however...(see attachment)
Yup we have the same issue here with a brand new 2024 M3 Macbook Pro running Sonoma 14.5. So far only one user has reported issues with all Office apps crashing at the same time. This all started mid last week. We've tried repairs and reinstalls, but nothing has worked.
Michael1240 I have a user who I switched from an M1 Macbook Air with no issue to a M1 Pro 16 inch and now is having the issues with the apps crashing all at once. I have done all of the steps mentioned by Microsoft before seeing this thread and still crashing. Guess I am opening a ticket tomorrow.
