How to get Microsoft Office products to open after November 2026 outage

Hi Cathy, :)

You're right, there was a big Microsoft 365 outage on Nov 12–13. It mainly hit Outlook and other cloud services, and things were coming back by Friday. If Word, Excel and PowerPoint still don't open now, first restart your PC if you haven't since the outage.

If that doesn't help, repair Office:

1. Close all Office apps.
2. Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps (Windows 11) or Apps & features (Windows 10).
3. Find Microsoft 365 (or your Office version) and select Modify.
4. Choose Quick Repair. If the apps still don't open afterwards, run it again with Online Repair, which reinstalls Office.

Restart the PC when it's done.

If they still won't open, what happens when you click one: nothing at all, an error message, or a window that closes right away?

https://support.microsoft.com/office/repair-an-office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b

If this fixes it, marking it as accepted helps others who hit the same thing after the outage.

I used Claude to go through the docs and help with the write-up, and checked everything myself before posting.

I’d check whether an add-in is preventing Word from starting:

Press Windows + R >> type winword /safe >> Enter.

If Word opens, go to File >> Options >> Add-ins >> Manage: COM Add-ins >> Go. Uncheck one add-in at a time, then close Word and reopen it normally to identify which one causes the problem.

Please let me know whether Word opens in Safe Mode, and I’ll follow up.