Microsoft has a fix for Office 2016 issues after faulty update broke Word, Excel and Outlook
There is not long left for Office 2016 in terms of official support from Microsoft, but it felt like adding salt to the wound when a recent update caused Word, Excel and Outlook to stop working.
Microsoft is certainly no stranger to breaking Windows with problematic updates, but with the KB5002700 security update released earlier this week, it was Office 2016 that was affected. So severe were the problems caused, Microsoft has been forced to release an out-of-band fix.
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When the KB5002700 update was released, the aim was to fix a remote code execution vulnerability that existed in Office 2016.
A known issue was listed for the update:
Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Outlook might stop responding after you install the KB5002700 security update for Office 2016.
As these apps are the very reason people are using Office, it is hard to downplay the significance of the problems. And this goes some way to explaining just why Microsoft moved so quickly to develop a fix.
Microsoft has now released the KB5002623 update which it says resolves the issue. The company points out that:
To restore the full Office 2016 suite to a working state, you must have both updates KB5002700 and KB5002623 installed.
The KB5002623 update must be manually downloaded and installed from the Microsoft Download Center; you can find it here.
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