Microsoft Office 365 stopped working

[tgrue2]

I have spent over 10 total hours on the phone with Microsoft to get my office working again.  I had both office 2019 and 2021 and both stopped functioning a few months ago.  Decided to upgrade to 365 but alas the same issues.  None of the office apps (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint)  would open.  Microsoft online got into my system and after various tried attempts made some registry entries to get it working again.  This happened three different times but after a few days it would happen again and again. I installed and reinstalled Office on numerous occasions on my own and with Microsoft helping me.  I have run Microsoft scrub to completely uninstall and then reinstalled with no luck. Did some research and found some other people with the same issues and recommended uninstalling CCleaner, so a few days ago I uninstalled my CCleaner Pro program.  Office has been working perfect since.  I know it has only been a few days but so far so good.  Just for info purposes I had completely reinstalled Windows 11 with no change. It was only after uninstalling CCleaner that my Office is now working perfectly again. With all the positive comments I have seen for CCleaner this has been a major problem for me. I was able to find a few posts on this site regarding this subject matter and really wish I had found it sooner but didn't know the cause was CCleaner until recently.  There is no doubt in my mind that this was the issue.  

[nukecad]

Are you by any chance using Avira antivirus?

[tgrue2]

Thanks for responding.  I use Norton 360. I uninstalled this as well before reinstalling Office as part of the help I received from Microsoft.

[nukecad]

It was just a stab, there is a know problem if you use Avira and any cleaning app.

[JimQ]

I have the same problem. All the Office 365 apps and Adobe Acrobat reader stopped working on both my PCs. I found a thread on Microsoft forums saying people had problems associated with CCleaner. I deleted CCleaner on both computers and the problems went away. I am not using Avira antivirus. Is there a way I can get CCleaner back and not mess the other things up?

[tgrue2]

I totally agree. Paid for an annual subscription to CCleaner only to have my Microsoft programs stop working. There has got to be a workaround for this. Since deleting CCleaner over a month ago there has been no issues with my office programs. What part of CCleaner is creating this problem?  Now that I see others are having this same issue there should be a fix.  If not refunds should be given. 

[jjbr]

100% agree. I've encountered the same problem. Since deleting CCleaner there are no issues with my Microsoft 365 anymore. If this issue is not fixed shortly I will have to cancel my annual subscription. Just for information - I'm using Norton 360.

[lmacri]

Is anyone in this thread using the CCleaner Premium bundle (i.e., CCleaner Pro plus the Kamo VPN) or some other third-party VPN?

Dgeesy65 posted in October 2022 in Kamo is Blocking my Outlook 365 that their Outlook 365 runs normally if they turn off their Kamo VPN, and noted that there is a conflict if they try to run Piriform's Kamo VPN and the Norton Secure VPN that is bundled with their Norton 360 antivirus at the same time.

Since a few users in this thread have mentioned they use Norton 360, do your Microsoft 365 programs run normally if you temporarily disable your Norton Secure VPN (My Norton | Secure VPN | Turn Off)?
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2364 * Firefox v108.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2211.5-1.1.19900.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.19.229-1.0.1860 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7175 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.06.10144
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

[tgrue2]

I have not used VPN thru Norton.  When I do use VPN I use Opera with their built in VPN.  My office has had no issues since deleting CCleaner and works with no issues with Norton.

[Jacko]

I'm having the same problem. Why is there no responce from the folks at CCleaner here? I liked most of the results of running CCleaner but I can't live with having to reset onedrive and reinstall Microsoft 365 every time it runs.

 

[Guest MeganCCleaner]

Hi everyone. I'm not yet certain of why CCleaner causes issues with Office 365 but I am eager to investigate further.

Prior to when this problem occurs, do you use the Health Check feature of CCleaner, Custom Clean and/or the Registry cleaner?

[redwolfe_98]

avira is owned by norton, now. my guess is that people who use norton are experiencing the same problem as people who use avira.

i do think it would be easy for ccleaner/piriform/avast to fix the conflict with the avira program by simply setting the ccleaner program to ignore the folder that is created by the avira program, within the "c:\windows\temp" folder. hopefully that also would fix the problem(s) for others, too, who are using norton, if it is the same problem in both cases, which is what i am thinking is the case.

[lmacri]

10 hours ago, redwolfe_98 said:

avira is owned by norton, now. my guess is that people who use norton are experiencing the same problem as people who use avira.

i do think it would be easy for ccleaner/piriform/avast to fix the conflict with the avira program by simply setting the ccleaner program to ignore the folder that is created by the avira program, within the "c:\windows\temp" folder. hopefully that also would fix the problem(s) for others, too, who are using norton,...

Hi redwolfe_98:

As far as I know, the Sentry Eye technology from BullGuard / Avira that was discussed in AW7's July 2022 thread CCleaner Corrupting Program Files has not been ported into Norton 360.

NortonLifeLock also acquired Avast in 2021 (see the MakeUseOf article How Norton's Acquisitions Changed the Antivirus Industry) and I suspect a few features that were added to Norton 360 in recent years like Norton Software Updater and Norton Smart Scan (which is similar to CCleaner's one-click PC Health Check and runs performance and network scans in addition to a quick malware scan) were ported from Avast.  I can't see any topics posted in the  Norton 360 for Windows forum in the past year from users who reported that they could not run Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365 while Norton 360 was installed, but perhaps a conflict is created when Norton 360 users are using CCleaner (an Avast / Piriform product) features like Performance Optimizer and/or PC Health Check at the same time.

Kudos to employee MeganCCleaner for stepping in to this thread and offering to help affected users determine why Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 does not function correctly on their systems when CCleaner is installed.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2364 * Firefox v108.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2211.5-1.1.19900.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.19.229-1.0.1860 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7175 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.07.10191
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620S v1.21.0

[lmacri]

Have any affected users tried disabling CCleaner's Performance Optimizer and re-booting to see if that allows Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 to run normally?

The following comment was posted by APMichael on 05-Jan-2022 in Novice55's Can't Open Microsoft Programs After Running CCleaner. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if simply disabling Performance Optimizer is sufficient to remove the Debugger entries in the registry or if the entire CCleaner program has to be installed.

Quote

Possible cause, which Piriform should check: I suspect the now frequent problems with Office have more to do with the Performance Optimizer. In a thread (which I unfortunately could not find anymore) someone had reported that the Performance Optimizer adds Debugger entries in the registry for the .exe files of the Office applications. Deleting these Debugger entries should have solved the problem at that time as well.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options

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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2364 * Firefox v108.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2211.5-1.1.19900.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.19.229-1.0.1860 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7175 * MS Office Home and Business 2019 Click-to-Run (Version 2211 / Build 15831.20208) * CCleaner Free Portable v6.07.10191
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

[lmacri]

On 06/01/2023 at 17:51, lmacri said:

Have any affected users tried disabling CCleaner's Performance Optimizer and re-booting to see if that allows Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 to run normally?

The following comment was posted by APMichael on 05-Jan-2022 in Novice55's Can't Open Microsoft Programs After Running CCleaner. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if simply disabling Performance Optimizer is sufficient to remove the Debugger entries in the registry or if the entire CCleaner program has to be installed....

Further to my 06-Jan-2023 post, affected users might also want to monitor Wisewiz's 08-Jan-2023 topic CCleaner Keeps Throwing "Debugger" Subkeys Into the Registry about how CCleaner added one of these "debugger" subkeys in their registry that prevented them from running their Macrium Reflect imaging software.  Once the registry entry was deleted their Macrium Reflect software ran correctly again.

Is anyone from Piriform / Avast following up on this?  Should affected users be contacting the support team at support@ccleaner.com and submitting logs collected while running CCleaner in debug mode, or does the new reporting tool that was added to CCleaner v6.04  in Sept 2022 (see xClean's C:\Program Files\CCleaner\CCleanerBugReport.exe as Part of v6.04 Pro) automatically collect the required logs now?

I imagine that most users who have managed to trace problems running Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365  back to CCleaner and don't have the technical expertise to safely find and remove "debugger" subkeys in their registry have already uninstalled CCleaner and won't want to reinstall it to troubleshoot until Avast / Piriform acknowledges that they are aware of the problem.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2364 * Firefox v108.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2211.5-1.1.19900.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.19.229-1.0.1860 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7175 * MS Office Home and Business 2019 Click-to-Run (Version 2211 / Build 15831.20208) * CCleaner Free Portable v6.07.10191
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

[lmacri]

On 06/01/2023 at 17:51, lmacri said:

Have any affected users tried disabling CCleaner's Performance Optimizer and re-booting to see if that allows Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 to run normally?

The following comment was posted by APMichael on 05-Jan-2023 in Novice55's Can't Open Microsoft Programs After Running CCleaner. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if simply disabling Performance Optimizer is sufficient to remove the Debugger entries in the registry or if the entire CCleaner program has to be installed...

Please note that Novice55 posted a possible workaround  today (10-Jan-2023) in their 03-Jan-2023 thread Can't Open Microsoft Programs After Running CCleaner that was suggested by CCleaner Customer Support.

I can't confirm that choosing the Sleeping Programs tab of Performance Optimizer and clicking Wake Up for the affected programs would fix the problem since I use CCleaner Free Portable v6.07 and presume that my MS Office Home & Business 2019 C2R programs are launching correctly because my edition of CCleaner does not include the Performance Optimizer feature.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2364 * Firefox v108.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2211.5-1.1.19900.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.19.229-1.0.1860 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7175 * MS Office Home and Business 2019 Click-to-Run (Version 2211 / Build 15831.20208) * CCleaner Free Portable v6.07.10191
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

[Mimimi]

I also spent the afternoon with microsoft. They also  gave me a link to download office again. Didn't work.

But I just tried to wakeup all app in Performance Opotimizer and it works!

[Hmm]

Necroposting?  I have Office 365 installed and have for a few years now. 

The OP and others need to learn how to format their posts better. It's hard to read and understand their problem when everything is crammed together. They should use [multiple] paragraphs to separate their points and make it easier for others to help them.

Anyway, maybe lock this thread? @nukecad

[nukecad]

Someone replying to old threads often happens, people don't check the date of the last post made before adding their comment.
I've been guilty of it myself.
(And spammers don't care what the last date was, but we usually get rid of those before you see them).

We don't usually lock threads, they just die a natural death (unless someone revives them).

In this case as all the software involved has had numerous updates since the thread was created I agree that to avoid re-hashing old issues/cause (that may have been solved) starting a new thread for new issues would be more useful.

Softwares do change/evolve and so even when a problem initially looks similar to an older one the cause may be totally different.

PS. As for the formatting of posts, anyone can make a post regardless of their level of writing skill.
Personally I blame the big walls of text that you often see these days on SMS text messaging.
It's fine having no line spacing or paragraphs in a SMS text because they are generally short, but that lack of formatting doesn't carry over well into longer writings such as emails or forum texts and just makes then more difficult to read and make any sense of.