Clearing Corrupted Microsoft Office Settings

Microsoft Office (which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) sometimes corrupts its preferences. We used to use an old version which was particularly prone to this. If this older version has corrupted the preferences in your account, you can make Microsoft Office build a new set for you.

In order to make Microsoft Office rebuild its preferences, you just need to throw out the old set and run Word once.

• Make sure that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are not running.
• Open your Home folder.
  • Go to the Finder by clicking on the blue face icon in the Dock.
  • Go to the menu bar and select Go → Home
• Open your Library folder.
• Open your Preferences folder.
• Find all files with a name like “com.microsoft.<anything>.plist” and drag them to the Trash. This may include one or more of the following. It might also include files with other names.
  • com.microsoft.autoupdate.plist
  • com.microsoft.error_reporting.plist
  • com.microsoft.Excel.plist
  • com.microsoft.OfficeNotifications.plist
  • com.microsoft.PowerPoint.plist
  • com.microsoft.Word.plist
• Find the folder named “Microsoft” and drag it to the Trash icon in the Dock.
• Next, go back to your Home folder, as described above.
• Open your Documents folder.
• Find the folder named Microsoft User Data and drag it into the Trash.
• Run Word. It will take a short while (30-60 seconds) to run.

At this point, you can quit Word and do whatever you need to do. The next time that you run Word, Excel, or PowerPoint they should be much quicker to run.