[German]As of September 12, Microsoft has released various security updates for Office 2013, 2016 and the click-to-run variants (2016-2021 as well as Office 365). There has been some feedback from users on the blog regarding problems. I'll summarize the problems in a review – one crash problem has been fixed in the meantime.
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Patchday: Microsoft Office Updates (September 12, 2023)
On September 12, 2023 (second Tuesday of the month, Microsoft Patchday) Microsoft released several security updates for still supported Microsoft Office versions. The patches rolled out via Windows Update for the MSI version of Microsoft Office 2013 and Microsoft Office 2016 are listed in the blog post Patchday: Microsoft Office Updates (September 12, 2023).
Update KB5002457 causes appwiz.cpl/mso.dll errors
Readers reported (see this German comment) "Ordinal 1539" errors after installing Office 2016 update KB5002457, which occurred by calling appwiz.cpl or the library file mso.dll. I've addressed the issues within my blog post Office 2016 Update KB5002457 causes appwiz.cp-/mso.dll errors.
In the meantime, Microsoft has added a note to the support article DDescription of the security update for Office 2016: September 12, 2023 (KB5002498) that update KB5002457 must also be installed. If this update is missing, the "Ordinal Not Found" errors described above occur.
If necessary, download the missing update from the Microsoft Update Catalog and install it manually. Thanks to the readers who pointed out this issue in the German and English blog.
What surprises me at this point is the fact that the affected users usually have the updates for Office 2015 MSI versions rolled out via Windows Update. So actually all September 2023 updates for Office 2016 should have been installed. Why an update is missing then is a mystery – possibly there was an installation error or the order of installation plays a role. Probably that question can't be solved though.
Problem with Outlook startup
German reader Markus got in touch in this comment and writes that Outlook 2016 in his environment takes a very long time to start on first invocation since the September 2023 patchday. The blue popup box appears, then it shows "Profile is loading", to then show the message "being processed…".
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Then the system seems to hang for about 3-4 minutes until the Outlook window is finally displayed. What is strange is that once Outlook has been successfully opened, the application subsequently starts up again at the usual speed when it is called up again.
On the page of known issues with Outlook after the September 2023 update, I found only one entry in this regard Outlook starts up slowly and hangs at splash screen when REST to MAPI is unexpectedly toggled in connection with the June 2023 update. I had also reported this error pattern in the German blog posts Microsoft 365: Kein Zugriff auf Dienste, Exchange Online oder Teams und Outlook bleiben hängen and Microsoft 365: Microsoft shares a workaround for hanging/slow running Outlook. And there is an old post Outlook issues: Crashes, deleted mails, slow start from 2020 that also names a cause.
In the future, such problems could increase, as Microsoft will stop supporting Office 2016/2019 in connection with Microsoft services from October 2023 (see my blog post Support ends for connections to Microsoft 365 services for Office 2016/2019 after October 2023).
Excel 2013: Double-click no longer opens xls/xlsx files
German Blog reader JohnnyFlash reports to this German comment that after installing the September 2023 updates, Excel 2013 no longer opens xls/xlsx files when double-clicking on it. The contents of the program window remain blank after opening. Temporary workaround is: Start Excel 2013 and then load the desired file by drag & drop into the Excel window or via the File menu and the Open command.
At Microsoft there is this post where a user describes the same error pattern and states that Excel opens with an empty window. The background is that Microsoft does an Application Virtualization so that Excel shortcuts are opened with "appvlp". Changing the invoked program to excel.exe in the shortcut properties does not help, because then the error "The operating system is not presently configured to run this application" or similar appears. The discussion thread linked above now has five pages where users confirm the problem.
In the above thread (answer from Krzysztof Nikołajczuk) and also within this reddit.com post you will find the hint to start the Office client with the following command:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\ClientX64\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=15.0.5571.1000
to update to version 15.0.5571.1000 to fix this problem. In addition, Gan Ghee Ming points out in this thread that the links in the Start menu shortcuts contain the correct syntax to invoke the program. It will say something like:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\client\AppVLP.exe" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\Root\Office15\Exel.exe"
is needed when calling.
Excel behaves strangely
Susan Bradley reported on Patchmanagment about a strange Excel 2016 behavior (64 bit). Excel 2016 acts differently in Windows 11 22H2 than in Windows 21H2. There it says from a user:
When you try to copy a range in Excel, it hangs, memory consumed keeps increasing, and the Excel process needs to be killed in Task Manager. Removing the W11 22H2 Sept. updates doesn't resolve the issue. I imaged back to W11 21H2, updated to 21H2 Build 22000.2416 – windows10.0-kb5030217, installed windows11.0-kb5029920-x64-ndp481 and all Sept. Office 2016 updates. Excel 2016 is working as expected.
I've confirmed it is W11 22H2 OS related. I have another PC with the same issue.
Have you heard similar reports? I wanted to bring this to your attention.
However, the user has found out the cause and writes:
I figured out the cause. You should find this fascinating.
Excel 2016 behaves differently in 22H2 than it does in 21H2, but it may not be the fault of the OS.
An Excel file that already has the first row frozen works fine in 21H2 when you try to copy a filtered column with any number of rows (file has about 1000 rows total).
The same Excel file with the first row frozen hangs and consumes memory in 22H2 when you try to copy a filtered column larger than about 60 to 100 rows.
Using the same Excel file under 22H2, if you unfreeze the first row and then refreeze it, the filtered column copy works as expected without Excel hanging.
Similar articles:
Patchday: Microsoft Office Updates (September 12, 2023)
Office 2016 Update KB5002457 causes appwiz.cp-/mso.dll errors
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