Those of you who were participating in the developer releases or public beta of Yosemite (or even the dot zero release) may recall that there was an issue with Outlook 2011 not displaying the main window if you had the disclosure triangle open to show your list of folders in your mailbox. Sad to say, the Office 2011 14.5.0 update has resurrected this issue. Outlook will launch, but the main window will not open. You can create new messages and events via the menus, but that's it. If you keep that disclosure triangle closed when you quit the application, it'll launch just fine again.
Solved
Office 14.5.0 update resurrects invisible main window issue
+14Best answer by joecurrin
14.5.1 just released to fix this issue. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3048688
+18Yes, this is confirmed x3 by me and teammates on 10.10.4 seed#3.
Went back to 14.4.9 and all is well.
+23any way to block the update?
+18sent in to apple feedback tool this morning. reminded them that they broke and fixed this once already.
+18@jwojda I think this is only a problem for 10.10.4 beta people. my 10.10.3 box is running 14.5.0 just fine. restarts with disclosure triangles open or closed.
+24any way to block the update?
Not exactly. Its a regular pkg install, so Restricted Software won't help. Maybe get your network/firewall folks to temporarily block the MS Auto Update site and mactopia.com since they would be available from those locations. Other than that, can't really think of a way to block it.
We'll likely get a notification out through official channels to our user base to not install this update, 'cause you know many of them just will.
Edit: misunderstood the extent of this issue. If its just for folks running 10.10.4 beta, I'm not very concerned.
+18I'm installing on 10.10.3 Macs now to double-check. Sent in feedback as well so hoping it's dealt with in the next build.
I'm running 10.10.3, just installed the Office 14.5.0 update and the main window doesn't show, so it's not limited to 10.10.4 beta apparently.
Is there any kind of work around while the fix is worked on?
Here's the process I just sent to my folks:
- Quitting all Office applications
- Uninstall Office 2011 - see here for the procedure: http://www.officeformachelp.com/2012/12/office-for-mac-2011-remove-office/ (see the "USE SCRIPT TO REMOVE" section.)
- Restart the Mac
- Reinstall Office 14.4.9 following the restart.
Outlook should start working again once rolled back to 14.4.9.
+15+18New Identity did not help on my 10.10.4 Macs. I'm just sticking with 14.4.9 for now and recommending others do as well...
Pretty much did what Rich did above.
+18Not sure what I'm doing wrong (or right :/ ) but I can't reproduce the fault. I've got 10.10.3 and 14.5.0.
+18quit outlook
kill database daemon if its still running, which it likely is on this version
delete Library/Caches/Outlook and com.microsoft.outlook
delete Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist and com.microsoft.outlook*
killall cfprefsd
relaunch outlook
new window will appear
+23is this only on upgrades or are new installs affected?
+18@jwojda , don't know if anyone has a full 14.5.0 installer, but I did my updates on three 14.4.9 installs and one 14.4.8.
Cleanly imaged Macs, FWIW sans my own Mac, which is the only one that had a prior Outlook Profile. The others did not have a profile yet.
+23Here's the process I just sent to my folks: Quitting all Office applications Uninstall Office 2011 - see here for the procedure: http://www.officeformachelp.com/2012/12/office-for-mac-2011-remove-office/ (see the "USE SCRIPT TO REMOVE" section.) Restart the Mac Reinstall Office 14.4.9 following the restart. Outlook should start working again once rolled back to 14.4.9.
I noticed the script doesn't remove the Office 2011 folder, but none of the apps launch, even after reboot.
+3We have seen this issue on a pretty widespread basis. Not every system is affected, but a significant nubmer are. My system (10.10.3/14.5.0) is not affected, but many with the same OS/Office version are affected.
Deleting or moving preferences and deleting cache/killing cfprefsd fixes the issue, but in many cases it will occur again within a couple of hours.
Our best solution at this point mirrors Rich's - remove office 2011 14.5.0 via script, reinstall 14.4.9 (luckily we did not update our Self Service installer yet).
+23@boettchs sorry, yes, that's what I meant a clean install (new deployment/reimage via whatever office 2011 installer + 14.5.0 update) vs upgrading a user's install.
+18@jwojda ,
If you want to block what I'd guess would be most users from updating, put "Microsoft AutoUpdate.app" into restricted software.
There may well be some geeks that look for updates, but that I'd wager this would stop most.
Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft AutoUpdate.app
+7Removing the preferences and killing the cfprefsd processes is a temporary fix, and the problem can return on relaunch. Testing here indicates that the problem occurs when you expand the Exchange mailbox sub folders then quit with them expanded.
As a quick fix, without the need for uninstalling, we have been simply replacing the Microsoft Office 2011 folder with one copied from a machine running v14.4.9. We have had 100% success with this so far.
+14the problem occurs when you expand the Exchange mailbox sub folders then quit with them expanded.
Hit the nail on the head. This issue was introduced by some change in Yosemite, and Microsoft released a patch to fix it (I think it was 14.4.6). I've reverted to 14.4.9 and all is well. Hopefully we'll see some quick action on this one.
+21I can confirm the problem here too. Running 10.10.3. I updated and experienced the problem. I completely uninstalled Office and deleted prefs and reinstalled and updated to 14.4.9 and all was well again. I updated again to 14.5.0 on the off chance it was just a funky installation but the update killed Outlook again. I uninstalled, reinstalled and updated back to 14.4.9 and left it as that. I have AutoUpdate disabled on all the Macs here and I control what is either pushed out or made available via SelfService. 14.5.0 is one that will NOT be made available here. I'll wait for 14.5.1. I have not tried it on 10.9 Macs.
+18We have blocked MS AutoUpdate from running using Restricted Software, and used the message to point people to Self Service for approved MS updates. We had already set the check to Manual via a defaults write. Hopefully this gets sorted shortly.
+26I just had a user walk up with this happening on his Mac. 10.10.3. Fun!
+8@dgreening care to share a screenshot of your restricted software for that. I tried to get it setup but had no luck. Also does anyone have an extension attribute that shows the MAC's that have MS Autoupdate set to automatic?
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