Windows 10 V1903 Inplace Upgrade: Issues with Office 2013

[German]A German blog reader has encountered issues after using an Inplace Upgrade from Windows 7 SP 1 to Windows 10 May 2019 Update when Microsoft Office 2013 is installed. Here is some information that might save some work for those affected.


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Frequent German blog reader Markus B. is an owner of a small IT company. Some time ago he sent me a mail with the relevant information (thanks for that), which I simply posted as an article within my German blog. But I forgot to deliver an English version. Here is now the article for my English readers.

Issues after Upgrade

Since the release of Windows 10 Version 1903, Markus B. has noticed a crude bug in the Inplace Upgrade of Windows 7 in conjunction with Microsoft Office 2013. He sent me his description so that I could publish it on the blog and save other users from a lot of work. By the way, this behavior cannot be observed with Microsoft Office 2010 / 2016 / 2019. Here is the error description by Markus:

Currently, we very often perform in-place upgrades in companies to migrate from Win7 (mostly x64) to Win10 (now 1903). However, if MS Office 2013 is installed under Windows 7, MS Word / MS Excel / MS Outlook will still open properly after the upgrade (using a 1903 image), but will close again automatically after 1-3 seconds.

That's a pretty stupid bug, of course. I have searched once, here is a longer thread with a similar error description.

After Windows 10 Version 1909 has released, I would claim that the issue also happens with this build.

Workaround: Deactivate Hardware acceleration

Markus B. wrote that a short research on the Internet showed that the error can be eliminated by deactivating the hardware acceleration. He states that the control is done via the 32-bit DWORD value DisableHardwareAcceleration in the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Graphics\


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A value of "1" in DisableHardwareAcceleration forced MS Word to launch without an issue. If the described entry in the registry is already set before the Inplace Upgrade in Windows 7, the error does not occur under Windows 10, as Markus told me. This website describes how to deactivate the hardware acceleration on the user interface. Markus say:

Strange is: If the hardware acceleration is reactivated after the start in the extended Word options, the error DOES NOT occur again…..

Important: After setting the registry value and restarting the system, MS Office prompts for a "reactivation", which can be waved through without entering a key using the online activation wizard….

In addition, the blog reader wrote me that the described behavior has occurred on a good dozen PCs with MS Office 2013 in various companies so far. Therefore Markus excludes that it could be due to the installation image or a certain system configuration. Maybe this information from Markus will helpful.


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4 Responses to Windows 10 V1903 Inplace Upgrade: Issues with Office 2013

  1. Ed says:

    I had the same problem after installing windows 10. First, I had to run a Repair on Office 2013.
    – To begin, click on Start and then Control Panel.
    – After the Control Panel window opens, click on Uninstall a Program.
    – A list of all installed programs should now appear. …
    – Select Microsoft 2013, then click on the "Change" option
    – After the dialog box loads, choose the Repair option and click Continue.

    After the repair completes, you will be able to open office applications and they will stay open, but will tell you you need to activate office. To do so, it asks you to sign in to your Microsoft account. I did so and it told me I didn't have the product, so I went to account.microsoft.com/services. When logged on, it gave me a list of previously installed versions of office on my PC, including the license key. Next to each it had a link to click that said "Install", which I did. It automatically reinstalled an activated version of Office 2013,

  2. Bruce Palmer says:

    Office 2013 64 bit. Win 7 Pro 64 bit. In-place upgrade to Win 10 Pro. Office removed then re-installed.

    Word, Excel and Powerpoint now do not render inserted images correctly. PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP display random screen graphics rather than the image. The image is correct internally; if the document is saved as a PDF then the images are correct in the PDF. They are also correct if copied out, then pasted into MS-Paint. It is a graphics rendering issue affecting just MS-Office.

    However, if the image has been pasted in windows enhanced metafile format, it displays correctly. The workaround is therefore (i) insert image (ii) cut image (iii) paste-special as "windows enhanced metafile".

    Interestingly, Powerpoint scrambles the image in the slide, but shows it correctly in the slide sorter panel on the left.

    Everything else in Win10 works correctly, Win10 desktop is fine, MS-Paint is fine … it is just the rendering inside MS-Office of png, jpg, gif and bmp embedded images while editing the document.

  3. Don F Budnick says:

    What did you do to fix it?

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