Microsoft has released an emergency update for Office 2016 users following widespread reports of critical crashes in key productivity applications, including Word, Excel, and Outlook.
The issue emerged after users installed the KB5002700 security update, part of April’s Patch Tuesday rollout.
The company confirmed that the KB5002700 update, initially released to address multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities, inadvertently introduced a bug causing Office applications to stop responding or fail to launch altogether.
Reports quickly surfaced across social media and user forums, prompting Microsoft to act swiftly.
In response, Microsoft has issued the out-of-band KB5002623 update, available now via the Microsoft Download Center.
“This update fixes the known issue in KB5002700 that causes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Outlook to stop responding,” Microsoft stated in an official update Thursday.
“To restore the full Office 2016 suite to a working state, you must have both updates KB5002700 and KB5002623 installed.”
This patch is designed specifically to resolve the stability issues introduced by KB5002700. However, the fix applies only to the Microsoft Installer (.msi)-based edition of Office 2016 – and not to the Click-to-Run versions, which remain unaffected.
“Be aware that the update in the Microsoft Download Center applies to the Microsoft Installer (.msi)-based edition of Office 2016. It doesn’t apply to the Office 2016 Click-to-Run editions, such as Microsoft Office 365 Home.”
The company also resolved an unrelated but compounding issue that affected users of localized versions of classic Outlook. Previously, when attempting to download their regional versions of Outlook, users were redirected to the English version by default. That problem has now been corrected, restoring access to correctly localized installations.
“The Office Team fixed the standalone “Download” link for the localized versions by adding a dropdown picker to pick the language to install at You can’t open classic Outlook on a new Windows PC,” Microsoft said. “Although the standalone download is now fixed, there are issues installing from the Store. Installing from the Store may pull down the wrong language. For instance, if you try to install English, you may get Portuguese. The Office Team says that the Store fix will begin rolling out, starting Monday April 14, 2025. Until that fix completes rolling out, please install from the standalone download.”
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