Forum Discussion
Word documents suddenly take several minutes to open after March 22 Office update
Hello everyone, I’m experiencing a severe and sudden issue with Microsoft Word that began immediately after the March 22, 2026 Office update. I’m hoping to understand whether this is a known regress...
I actually resolved the issue on the same day I opened this thread. A few hours later, I posted a separate comment explaining that rolling back to a previous version of Office/Word fixed the problem.
To clarify: the slowdown was very real. Opening any WORD document normally took a few seconds, and suddenly larger files (around 5 MB) required 5–10 minutes to open. Since this doesn’t seem to be affecting many users, I’m keeping an older Office build as a backup for now.
The version that works correctly for me is:
Version 2603 (Build 16.0.19822.20086) – 64‑bit
Unfortunately, I didn’t note the exact build that caused the issue, but it arrived with the March 22 update.