Office 2016 freezing up, it's a DISASTER

[JytteC]

I just got a new PC, Windows 10 and Office 2016. LORD HELP ME, because Microsoft don't seem able to.

I have had Office 2003 for 12 years, running on Windows XP for eight years. I use Excel extensively all day long for my work. Have many files running simultaneously and interconnected, and many macros to streamline my work. And it has worked flawlessly all those years. I loved my Excel and XP.

THEN I needed a new PC. The files got bigger and bigger, and my old machine had a hard time keeping up. Time for a new one, bigger and faster. Got my new PC on Dec.28,2015. I knew already that it was born with Windows 10,and having seen Windows 8.1 on another PC, 10 seems like an improvement. After installing Classic Shell I'm back to having a PC I can live with, and 'up to date'. So far so good.

Back in the day I paid good money for Office 2003, and it's still excellent. But now I'm forced to get a new Office, as Windows no longer support the old program. I just love having to pay over and over for the same software, thank you very much. Then I discover I can only buy a 'key' not the software. Why in God's name you can't buy a disc with the software any more is beyond me. Now, key in hand, you have to download the software, taking FOREVER, as I live in the middle of nowhere in Germany.

First shock: All my menus are gone. Instead I have a ribbon, that takes up way too much space, and is utterly useless, as I now need 3-4 clicks to do things I previously did with 1 or 2. Spending time on setting up a quick access bar has solved some of that at least, but I still lament the good old menus!

Second shock: The ****ed thing keeps freezing up, leaving me no alternative but to shoot it down via task manager. It is completely unstable. I crashes 10 times or more during a work day, leaving me no alternative than to basically save and copy every few seconds, or else start all over on what I'm doing. At least I can recover from the crashes this way.

3rd shock: Most of my macros no longer worked. Had to go through through each and every one and make changes, and I have a lot of macros. That's a couple of days of my life I won't get back. And still there are issues. Printing to Pdf, that I've been doing for many years without a problem, now creates huge files, more than 10 times bigger than before. I can't have that. Only option I have at the moment is to do all these 'print to pdf' manually, which defeats the purpose of macros and takes way too long.

My workday has turned into a nightmare! When I have a customer on the phone, they don't really want to hear 'sorry but my software just crashed so you'll have to wait'.

I just spent a pile of money to get the biggest, newest machine and software out there, and what I got is a computer that can't do the work.

Time to contact Microsoft Tech Support. So after a long day's work, around 5 pm, I did. Got hold of a tech on chat. Explained up and down the issues. Tech started having a look. Chat ended abruptly. I simply got kicked off the connection. What, Microsoft can't even keep their support lines up and running?

Techs 2, 3 and 4.... having to explain all over again to each of course, same result. Most of what I got while I WAS connected was 'I don't know this, maybe you should call the german hotline, here's the number and they're open 24/7'. Well they're not! They're open the exact same day-hours I am, so when am I supposed to call them? While I have my customers calling me???

Then I figure this ain't gonna work, so go on various Microsoft tech support pages listing problems like this (lo and behold I'm not the only one). ONE of the brilliant advice they give is to go to your software listing in control panel and run a 'repair online' on Office. So I did. Well.... it did NOT repair anything. What it did was give me an error message, and then WIPE Office off my PC! I'm not kidding.

So now I'm faced with having to re-install Office. Go to my account page and go through the ropes. Error message 'no permission'. Twice. THAT's when my biggest melt down hit! Anybody from Microsoft within my reach at that point in time would have been a head shorter, I can promise you that.

Back to good ol' tech support. Tech no.5 first of all figured out there was a mess on Microsoft's side (big surprise), and after some searching she managed to find the software that matched my key. Installing. Error message. Then took remote control of my PC to do some cleanup of things left behind by the so-called 'repair'. Well that managed to crash my PC, and that was the end of that connection. No.5, as I warned her of the disconnect risk, gave me a re-join link, but THEY DON'T WORK, they just get you a new tech. Useless.

Mind you, it's now around 11pm, I've been on the computer for over 15 hours fighting these problems. With tech support for over 6 hours, and I still have no software at all. I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep my usually friendly and polite manner of speaking.

Enter tech no.6. She first had to take an earful from me. She took it like a trooper. Apologized profusely (they all do, and of what use is that? Don't apologize, FIX it.) Anyway, no.6 was more astute, gave me a case number so at least I didn't have to explain all over again. Then went to work. I think no.5 did manage to clean up the mess from repair, and she also found the right software, so no.6 was able to get an install started. It did install, and did pick up my previous settings, so that was good. I had some more questions, and then.... my internet connection died. Oh thank you so much GERMAN TELECOM!

After an hour my connection came back, and I got an email form No.6 asking if Office was up and running. I appreciated that, and told her it was. At 2am I crawled into bed, utterly exhausted.

So, I get up this morning, gingerly starting up Excel, hoping for the best, but not trusting any of it, so I'm still doing my saving/copying/printing routines over and over again. It's a light day, so a few hours go by and I'm starting to think I'm out of the woods.... then CRASH. Back to square one.

Tech No.6's take on things was that Office was installed before I upgraded to version 1511 of Windows. And that installing clean AFTER the 1511 update would do the trick. Well, it didn't.

So I ask you, any of you, what on earth am I supposed to do now? I have work to do, and Microsoft has left me with a software that doesn't work and no way of going back.

I also would like to ask, why in God's name they release software this unstable???????????????? And with no warnings, nor any fixes in place. Tech support are as lost in the fog as I am.

 

[JytteC]

Very good advice, if I had had that option. I was hanging on to my XP as long as I could (as y'all see for good reason), and just before Xmas the graphics card started dying. I had a very hard time working on it just long enough to get a new PC. Then spent two weeks setting up the new computers and all my software (Office is but a part of it), transferring all my files to new format, fixing all the things that suddenly didn't work on 2016 etc etc. That was my entire vacation down the tubes. First thing Monday morning (yesterday) when real work began, so did the crashes, one after the other. Using the old PC is no longer an option.

 

[Dryver14]

Not sure how good this idea is but......on the no bad ideas theory,

what about saving one or 2 of the excel files as 2003 and see if you still crash on those files

 

[Sektor]

@JytteC
Is it correct that you bought your new PC with Windows 10 and Office 2016 because your workbooks became larger and larger? Couldn't you install Windows XP and Office 2003 on new machine, if you needed it? The only "problem" is that Office 2003 wouldn't see more than 4GB RAM, while beginning from Office 2010 you could install 64-bit version which imposes no limits. New Ribbon appeared almost 10 years ago, pal! And now you cry that your menus are gone. There're thousands of add-ins which would somewhat adapt your old menus. I myself recently installed (not bought) Office 2016 and removed it on the second day. Amongst different bugs in it (also mentioned on this forum here, here and here), the app is starting much slower that 2010. Closing workbooks shows some flickering. The new application model introduced in Excel 2013 (one EXCEL.EXE process per workbook) is SUCKS! If one workbook hangs, you're out of luck with remained workbooks. So what was the point of creating separate processes? There's nothing like that in 2010. If I create second EXCEL.EXE process, it doesn't matter whether first process is stuck - I do continue my work in second process.
So, I would advise you to throw off this Excel 2016 since there're no some terrible new cool features. You just take a look at What's new in Excel 2016 page - it's a dull page. They integrated Power Query! Wow! Hard work! And created the whole new waterfall chart! Whatta improvement! And Excel Apps? This is the most horrible thing I have ever seen. Power Query, Power Pivot - all can be installed also in 2010. I find 2010 more stable and pleasant to work with. You can install 64-bit version, so you can take leverage of your big memory (but if you use Windows API in your code, you need to change code a bit). Good luck!

 

[SpillerBD]

"After installing Classic Shell...."
You installed a third party program to make Win10 look like a previous version?
While trying to keep things the same on the surface, if it is a third party software how well has it been tested for Win10 or Office2016?

Are the crashes with new Office files or your old files?

 

[mole999]

"After installing Classic Shell...."
You installed a third party program to make Win10 look like a previous version?
While trying to keep things the same on the surface, if it is a third party software how well has it been tested for Win10 or Office2016?

Are the crashes with new Office files or your old files?

I've used power shell for a few years now, never a glitch, though Win 10 can now emulate the start menu as it used to

 

[Smitty]

I've got Windows 10 with Office 365 Pro Plus/Office 2016 (build 16.0.6001.1043) and Excel crashes all the time. Most notably if you switch to Outlook and send an e-mail. As soon as Excel is reactivated it crashed. And sometimes it crashes when I switch to Edge - case in point, it just crashed when I was typing this.

Fix & Repair seems to help it temporarily, but it inevitably goes back to the same behavior.

It was far worse when I had 2010, 2013 & 2016 installed side-by-side, so I got rid of them and went with 365. I use VMWare for my 2010 & 2013 now.

 

[SpillerBD]

Smitty, 32 or 64 bit Office? (Just to verify...)

 

[JytteC]

I will try to address these one at a time...

Yes, I installed Classic Shell, because I like it, and it works like a charm. And I'm aware that the new ribbon appeared right after 2003. Doesn't make me like it any better, but that a minuscule problem. So I'm old fashioned and like old menus, I'm allowed at my age. How on earth would I get a new PC with XP? All I could get was Windows 10. No new machines are offered with XP at least not around here. What good is my 24GB Ram if Office can only use 4 of them?

This is unfortunately water under the bridge. I did buy a machine with Windows 10 (which seems to work just dandy with everything BUT Office), and I did buy (several) Office 2016. Other people seem to have it work for them, and I'd love to be able to as well.

When your are asking about whether it crashes on my old or new files... I cannot make 'brand new files'. All my old files I opened in 2016, then saved them in 2016 as xlsm. Then fixed what problems there seemed to be. There doesn't seem to be any rime or reason to the crashes, other than I always have at least 5 files open when it happens, often more.

Apart from some part of macros suddenly not working (why did they change the vba codes????) I just discovered a field behaving strangely which makes no sense whatsoever. I am hugely unhappy with 2016, but I have to find a way to make it work.

 

[JytteC]

Just in case anybody in a similar situation reads this thread and wonders what happened:

After 3 weeks of nonstop nightmare, I solved the problem. Uninstalled Office 2016 !



I installed my old Office 2003 on the new Windows 10 machine. And it works just wonderful, like it always has.


As I now have 2 more PCs, one being a laptop, I went on Amazon and found 2 more discs with 2003, so the other 2 PCs will be running that as well. And I'm HAPPY



Those 3 weeks of 2016 showed me that there is NOTHING I need from it. When not crashing, it is way SLOWER than 2003, and I HATED the ribbon. I also have no need of the new format xlsx or xlsm, as my system runs internal only, all outside communication is with pdf files.



I only got 2016 because I was told 2003 won't run on Windows 10. Not so! Runs like it always did. Only faster now that I have a better machine.



I also experienced weird problems with graphics during that time. Windows (browser for example) would open with almost empty pages etc etc. This also went away as soon as 2016 was uninstalled.



I had to pick up my old files from before all this, and recap a couple of weeks worth of work, but that was a small price to pay to get my old system back.

The only other person who ever sees my files is my tax accountant, who receives a monthly file from me. He runs on Office 2013, and has NO problem reading/using my 2003 xls files.

I just had a good night's sleep, the first in weeks! I will now forget I EVER even HEARD of Office 2016.

Thank your for all support and advise offered to me here. Wish you all happy spreadsheeting in your chosen version

PS: I should mention that I did not buy Office 2016 'direct' from Microsoft. I bought 3 'keys' from Amazon (simply because they were 20 euro cheaper than online from MS). Good for me I simply packed them up and returned them (within the 30 days), and today the money was returned to my bank account. NEVER any hassle with Amazon.

 

[Mister Zero]

Smitty - I have the same problem, but with Thunderbird / Firefox. I do not have other versions of Office installed, only 2016 (Office 365). Have you been able to fix it yet?

I've got Windows 10 with Office 365 Pro Plus/Office 2016 (build 16.0.6001.1043) and Excel crashes all the time. Most notably if you switch to Outlook and send an e-mail. As soon as Excel is reactivated it crashed. And sometimes it crashes when I switch to Edge - case in point, it just crashed when I was typing this.

Fix & Repair seems to help it temporarily, but it inevitably goes back to the same behavior.

It was far worse when I had 2010, 2013 & 2016 installed side-by-side, so I got rid of them and went with 365. I use VMWare for my 2010 & 2013 now.