Emergency update for Microsoft Office
The patchday updates for Microsoft's Office 2016 apparently led to Office apps no longer responding. An emergency update helps.
(Image: heise online / dmk)
Microsoft has released an emergency update for Microsoft Office 2016. The Office apps from the development branch could become unresponsive or crash under certain circumstances after the April Patchday security updates from this week were installed.
Microsoft's developers explain in a support document for the emergency update KB5002623 that the security update KB5002700 for Office 2016 from April can cause Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Outlook to stop responding.
Emergency update fixes hanging Office apps
The update to KB5002623 is intended for the MSI installer-based Microsoft Office 2016 version and does not work with the Office 2016 "click-to-run" versions from Microsoft 365 Home, for example, the developers explain. To restore Office 2016 to an executable status, both the patchday update, i.e. KB5002700, and then KB5002623 must be installed.
Videos by heise
The update is available for download on Microsoft's website. The update files are available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Office 2016. Those affected should therefore check which version they are using before downloading. A Microsoft support article is supposed to provide information on how to recognize this –. However, the instructions may fail to get to the settings and the "Account" sub-item and the "About <App>" button below it.
After installation, the files Mso20win32client.dll.x64 and Mso20win32client.dll.x86 are available on 32- and 64-bit installations in version 16.0.5495.1002 with file date 22.03.2025.
On Wednesday night of this week, Microsoft released numerous updates for various programs on April Patchday. They plug security gaps, for example in Microsoft's Office packages or in the Windows operating systems. These include programs that are already being attacked by criminals in the wild. Updates should therefore be installed promptly. This makes problems such as those now observed with Office 2016 all the more annoying. At least Microsoft reacted quickly with an emergency update to correct the error.
(dmk)
