Last night's Windows auto update has crippled Office 2010 Starter!

JohnLG · 12 Sep 2013

Help!

As I shut my machine down last night Windows informed me it was doing 15 updates, which I allowed it to do.

This morning, the machint took a little extra time to boot up, I guess because it was finalising configurations.

Now I see all my icons for Word/ Excel in the folders and on Desktop have turned orange. When I click on a Word/ Excel Icon I get a dialogue box promting me to Activate an already purchased copu of Office 2010, Go online to purchase, or Try Office free for a limited time.

I have tried a Repair on Office 2010 Starter, but that has made no difference.

I am, however, able to open the documents by opening the application (Word/ Excel) and searching for the documents via the application's Open dialogue box.

Does anybody know what I need to do to fix this?

TIA.

Boozad · 12 Sep 2013

It may be a case of uninstalling the relevant update/s. There have been some known issues with the latest round of updates with Office 2007 and 2013 as far as I'm aware. Mine updated this morning before I came to work so I'll check and see if mine has been affected tonight when I get home.

mitchell65 · 12 Sep 2013

The updates should have automatically created a system restore point before they were installed. Restore your system to theat point.
EDIT: Sorry Boozad, crossed due o my slow typing!

Brink · 12 Sep 2013

Hello John,

The repair option didn't help me either. I had to uninstall Office from "Programs and Features", then reinstall it for it to fix mine without losing anything.

GEWB · 12 Sep 2013

Not posting this to pick an argument but why does anyone allow Microsoft autoupdates? This is yet another example why I wait days, weeks or months before applying Microsoft updates - I've been burned before and learned my lesson. No experienced sys-admin allows this so why do individual users do it?

I hope some users come away from this experience with a "lesson learned." Unless there is an existing and active exploit in the wild that you know would affect you directly, it is best to wait before applying Microsoft updates.

Regards,
GEWB

lawgirl · 13 Sep 2013

I am having this same issue at work. I don't know much about pcs and don't know how to go back to the restore point. I viewed the updates and it said to uninstall an update click uninstall update. However, I couldn't figure out how to do that.

mitchell65 · 13 Sep 2013

Hi lawgirl and welome to the Forum. First off it is always better to start a new Topic here then you get help on you particular problwm. By tagging on to another thread gets the two confused. However this might help you with your present problem:
Windows Update - Uninstall an Update
If there is anything in the guide that you do not undersatnd please come back and one of us will be happy to help.

**Pauly** · 13 Sep 2013

This is a known problem by MS they released a statement acknowledging the issue but have yet to release a fix, maybe next update tuesday but hopefully before or there is the option of uninstalling/reinstalling as Shawn has done, personally im not going to just incase it doesnt work think i will wait a while to see if there is a fix and as i dont auto update its not a problem

xunile · 16 Sep 2013

I have helped several customers over the past few days with this issue. I posted a video to my YouTube channel of how I've been fixing the problem. Hope it helps.