off2hcky

The issue my client was facing was not corrupted links. It was in fact blocking the executables. While troubleshooting I actually went in and renamed the excel, word, exe files to something else and the programs worked. So initially I thought it was some kind of virus blocking the office apps. But then that's when I went into task manager and saw the ccleaner process pop up when I was trying to run the original office executable files. And this was 2019 office and the freebie Ccleaner app.

I wanted to report that I just spent two hours on the phone with a client who had the same issue as O.P. No office apps would open, and a system restore that took several hours only to fail however the office apps still failed to open. During the troubleshooting I was disabling AV and also the CCleaner realtime app. (thinking, why would ccleaner be the problem??!) Still was unable to open Office Apps. I even reinstalled office apps from office 365 account with no joy. I finally was monitoring task manager while attempting to start office apps. In task manager I would see movement in what was listed. Something would quickly start and stop when I tried to start word or excel. (but it wasn't a word or excel task) I finally caught what app was starting. It was a CCLEANER process!! I couldn't catch the full name because it was so quick but I couldn't understand how that could be since I had shutdown ccleaner in the task bar. I didn't waste any time and uninstalled Ccleaner and immediately, the office apps began to work fine. I then came across this forum post so decided to update it in case other have the same issue. So no more Ccleaner for me or clients. Something is up with the latest version. My client was running windows 10, Norton 360 and office 2019.