SOLVED Problems with Microsoft Office 2016 (16.16.7)

[Lufbrarunner]

I had auto updates enabled on office 2016, and since it updated to 16.16.7 excel kept crashing and would not load. I uninstalled excel and the re installed from the original media which gave me excel 15.14.1 which seemed to work OK until I wanted to colour fill some cells, the drop down menu would not appear this also happened on the font colour too. I then manually updated to 16.16.7 where the original behaviour returned. This happened on both my iMac and MBP. Luckily I have Super Duper backups of both machines and found a copy of excel 16.16.6 which when copied over works just fine.
I now have auto updates turned off and will wait to see if 16.16.8 cures the problem, fingers crossed.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Spoke too soon 16.16.6 is now not opening Hmmmm.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

I believe that Excel in Office 2016 for Mac stopped at version 16.17, and you need Office 2019 for Mac or Office 365 to get up to 16.22.

Update history for Office for Mac

Normally, if you copy just the application over from a clone, it won't work, since all of the support files still remain from the newer version. You may have better luck uninstalling and reinstalling the entire Office 2016 Suite, and then apply all of the updates.

C

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Thanks for the input Cory. I did do a re install of the complete suite from my original media and then applied the upgrades, the problem persisted. I then downloaded the install file for 16.16.7 from the microsoft website and re installed from that everything is working on the iMac but the MBP still has the problem. At least I have half the problem solved

 

[Lufbrarunner]

MBP now sorted. I did a clean install of Mojave and then a complete install of Office 2016 from the fresh microsoft site file.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Glad it's sorted.

Microsoft Office can be a PITA at times. Crazy that the solution can be as drastic as it has been in your case.

C

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Luckily I do not have a lot of stuff on the MBP, just Office, Anaconda, Garmin express and Super Duper. Everything else, including data, is on external drives.
I will try looking for another spreadsheet app, but My spreadsheets can be pretty complex and I also need to be able to read from and write to them with Python/Pandas.