Resolved MS Office 2021 Home and Student Edition- Preferences greyed out with Word.

[Alpha Centauri]

Hi all

so I have a registered version of Office 2021 for mac and all with all suites I'm able to access the Preferences menu, except Word. It's simply greyed out. Before I try contact MS, perhaps someone here has a theory. I bought this MBP M2 (Ventura) and Office this year, directly from Apple.

Thank you.

 

[bogdanw]

You can try to close Word and delete ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word

 

[Alpha Centauri]

You can try to close Word and delete ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word

Just making sure I've got the correct one. Finder GoTo with your path, leads me to a Data folder with various other folders inside. Just want to make sure am not deleting anything outside of Word.

 

[bogdanw]

Yes. You can delete/move all that is inside the folder Microsoft Word or the folder itself. All will be recreated when you start Word again. The folder contains the user settings for Word.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

Yes. You can delete/move all that is inside the folder Microsoft Word or the folder itself. All will be recreated when you start Word again. The folder contains the user settings for Word.

I've binned that Data folder, restarted the Mac. It was repopulated but Preference for Word remains greyed out. This Office 21 install was straight from the MS website.

 

[bogdanw]

You could try to reinstall using the full Word Install package, Microsoft_Word_16.74.23061100_Installer.pkg at the moment
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=525134

Update history for Office for Mac https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac
Previous post about the Latest standalone installers https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...iness-2021-install-rant.2380367/post-31960189

 

[Alpha Centauri]

@bogdanw thank you for those links. I think I found the culprit as there was still an "activation" key symbol present with all the Office Apps. It's odd as it was all registered, could be actively used too and was verified (with transient message) whenever opened.

So I clicked on the key symbol, logged in within Word, logged out and that missing Prefs option was no longer grey. It is further bizarre this was only missing in Word alone. Oh well, the MS way..sigh.

I'll mark this thread as resolved now. Appreciate your help