Microsoft releases emergency update to fix Office 2016 crashes

​​Microsoft has released an out-of-band Office update to fix a known issue that caused Word, Excel, and Outlook to crash after installing the KB5002700 security update for Office 2016.

The company acknowledged these problems following user reports on social media that Office apps no longer open after applying the April 2025 security updates.

“We’re experiencing an issue on Windows 10 with Office 2016 where Word and Excel no longer open,” one impacted Office user said.

“Same behavior here: after starting Word it crashes and also Outlook crashes in calendar view. Uninstalling KB5002700 resolved both issues,” another added.

Microsoft has now addressed these crash problems in the KB5002623 Office 2016 update released on Thursday, two days after KB5002700 was pushed during this month’s Patch Tuesday to fix multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities.

Office users affected by this issue can download KB5002623 from Microsoft’s Download Center, but it’s important to note that it only applies to the Microsoft Installer (.msi)-based edition of Office 2016.

“This update fixes the known issue in KB5002700 that causes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Outlook to stop responding,” Microsoft said today.

“To restore the full Office 2016 suite to a working state, you must have both updates KB5002700 and KB5002623 installed.”

Today, Redmond also fixed the standalone “Download” link for localized classic Outlook versions, which were automatically set to English.

Additionally, it confirmed that it’s working on mitigating a licensing issue that is blocking access to Microsoft 365 services for some customers with Family subscriptions.

Last month, the company addressed another issue causing the new Outlook email client to crash when users clicked a button that should have helped them switch back to classic Outlook.