Microsoft 365 apps crash on Windows Server after Office update

January 14, 2025

Windows Server

Microsoft says a known issue is causing Classic Outlook and Microsoft 365 applications to crash on Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019 systems.

This confirmation comes after many customers reported over the last several days that Microsoft Outlook and Office 365 apps like Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint crashed within 15 seconds of launch.

Redmond says the root cause is a recent Office update integrating the React Native framework to support certain features in Microsoft 365 apps.

The known issue's impact is limited to customers who have updated their classic Outlook and Microsoft 365 applications to Version 2412 (Build 18324.20168).

"We've implemented a change to mitigate the impact for users on Windows Server 2016 devices, by reverting to version 2411, which isn't affected, and we're reaching out to some affected users to confirm that this resolves the problem," the company explains in the Microsoft 365 admins center under MO978220.

"We're determining if the same method can be used to mitigate the issue for users on Windows Server 2019 devices, or if another mitigation strategy is needed."

*Microsoft Outlook crash on Windows Server (Alex Fogerty)*

Customers who haven't been automatically reverted to Version 2411 (Build 18227.20162) can follow this procedure to revert manually as a temporary fix:

Open a Command Prompt in Administrator context.
Type or paste the two commands into the Command Prompt window and press Enter after each:
- cd %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun
- officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.18227.20152
To prevent Office from updating back to the latest build, you can turn off updates by clicking File, Office Account, Update Options, and Disable Updates.
Put a reminder on your calendar for February 11th to re-enable updates.

On Monday, Microsoft also mitigated a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) outage that prevented customers from accessing Microsoft 365 Office apps.

Last month, the company announced it was investigating a known issue that triggers "Product Deactivated" errors for Microsoft 365 Office app users.

A widespread outage caused by a token generation issue causing authentication requests to fail also took down Office web apps and the Microsoft 365 admin center in early December.