Can no longer open Office docs directly

My computer will no longer let me open any Microsoft document (Word, Excel, or Powerpoint) by clicking on the document directly. I have Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 (aka Office 15). In order for me to access any doc, I have to open the application itself (e.g., via the start menu pin) and then search for the document I want.

When I do try to double-click on a document directly, the following happens. A Windows Installer window pops up and prepares to install something. Several minutes later, I get an error message that says, "The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed."

I assume I have two problems. One, the separate issue of a faulty windows installer, along with the issue of not being able to click on a document to open it. I'm hoping there is a relatively easy fix to the latter because doing a total uninstall/reinstall of Office isn't at all appealing.

Thanks for the suggestions; I hadn't thought of the first one. Under Programs and Features, the only options for Microsoft Office are uninstall or change. So I clicked on change, though nothing seemed to happen.

I had tried to do the sfc / scannow, but it only got through ~20% of the verification stage before aborting and saying the scan could not be completed.

Perhaps your files are not correctly associated with MS Office.

Here's how to fix this problem in Word (Excel and other programs will be fixed in the same way):
* Rather than double clicking on a document, right-click on it and choose Open With.
* Select "Choose Another App".
* Browse to where the executable for Word is (WINWORD.EXE), and then tell it to always use that program with this type of document.
* For Word, you'll need to do these steps for both a .DOC and a .DOCX file, in order to make sure that both types of documents open with Word.

Okay, so I freed up some disk space and was able to run the scf scan to completion. It said it had found and repaired some issues. But alas, it didn't fix the Office problem. I also ran an MSI troubleshooter that found and fixed some broken issues, but also didn't fix the issue.

I have no idea what Word/Excel is trying to install when I double click on a document, but I still get an error message. The error message from yesterday was, "The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed." Since I ran the scans today, the error message I now receive when trying to open a document says, "Error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid."

Then I checked to see if Office had been updated as suggested above. It turns out MS Office hadn't been updated since December 2015! It had been set to automatically install updates, so I never noticed that it had stopped. (The Office software was validly/legally purchased by me, and it has only been installed on one device, my current laptop.) Attempts to update Office were unsuccessful; I don't know how to get two years' worth of updates at once.

I suspect I may have to uninstall Office and reinstall, but I'm nervous. I have the Product Key, and I have a backup of my laptop on a flash drive of which Office is a part. But I don't know how to install it from the flash drive.

Try my suggestion of File Asssociations that I posted above (#5). If that fixes things, you're done. If not, you've lost only a minute of your time.

mrjimphelps said:

Try my suggestion of File Asssociations that I posted above (#5). If that fixes things, you're done. If not, you've lost only a minute of your time.

Oh yes, that was one of the first things I checked after googling the issue. If only that had been the issue! Thanks for checking.