Office Apps Disappeared

[BobH]

I know it's close to the time when eerie things happen, but what might have caused all the Microsoft Office apps to disappear from my system. Could a Win 10 update have done this? I didn't do it and no one else uses this laptop.

[HansV]

What happens if you click the Start button (or press the Windows key) and type the name of one of the Office applications, for example Excel? Is the desktop application among the search results?

S2418.png

[BobH]

I tried both those before posting. When i view the apps by choosing the Windows button, Excel, Powerpoint and Word cannot be found. They were installed independently, that is, I did not first have to choose Microsoft Office folder to see the apps. The appeared under E, P and W respectively.

[HansV]

And if you click Start > Settings, then click Apps, is a version of Microsoft Office listed?

[BobH]

Using File Explorer to search the C: drive, I found Excel.exe but could not find word.exe or powerpoint.exe. Here are screenshots of search results.

excel exe search.PNG

Powerpoint exe search.PNG

word exe search.PNG

I'll post again with another ss.

[BobH]

Results of the Start>Settings>Apps route. I cannot load the MS Office file.

start settings apps.PNG

[HansV]

What happens if you click Modify?

[BobH]

It took me to Repair which I ran and now I have the apps back.

Thank you, once again, Mr. V!

[HansV]

Great!

[Rudi]

I'm still wondering what happened though?

[BobH]

Me too. I run disk cleaner and registry cleaner daily and Win 10 does its own updates. Otherwise, I've changed nothing.

[DaveA]

I would not be "registry cleaner daily" as they are known to removed entries that are needed.

It could have removed the entries that made Word to disappear.

[BobH]

Thanks, Dave!

[BobH]

Re-posting again to a thread I started . . .

My Office apps disappeared again despite the fact that I discontinued the Registry cleaning. i do run a disk cleaner from Glary Utilities.

Anyone else experiencing this? I've read that the latest Win 10 release created problems.

[HansV]

A small percentage of users experienced documents disappearing when they updated Windows 10 to version 1809 from an earlier version. But as far as I know this doesn't happen again after version 1809 has been installed, nor does it affect installed applications.

Can you get the applications back the same way as before?
Perhaps you should avoid disk and registry cleaners altogether.

[BobH]

Yes, I did recover the apps the same way as before. I meant to say that in the first post.

I have discontinued the registry cleaning since i got the advice before, but I do still clean up my hard drive because I have very little extra space on the machine. If I don't get the space back performance is affected.

How do I determine what update I'm on? I know so little about Win 10.

[HansV]

Press the Windows key or click the Start button.
Type winver and press Enter.
You'll see a dialog like this:

S2426.png

[BobH]

I found I'm on version 1803. I checked for updates and found that there are updates pending. I have automatic updates on. I suspect that it will update overnight.

I looked for a way to 'update now' but couldn't find one.

[HansV]

Clicking 'Check for updates' usually starts installing any available updates...

[JoeP]

I have had this happen once or twice after an Insider Preview build update. I just guessed that start menu did not get migrated correctly. It is disconcerting but a quick repair always has taken care of it.