From Microsoft’s February Patch Tuesday earlier this week, Microsoft has recalled KB3114717, an optional update for Office 2013. The patch was recalled following reports of Word, Outlook, and Excel 2013 freezing up on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 computers following the update. One CPU core would spike to 100% and make it impossible to edit the document.
As Microsoft has recalled the update, the number of impacted clients should come to a stop. If you were lucky enough to get the update installed before it was recalled, your fastest resolution is to uninstall the update through View Installed Updates under the Control Panel. Through WSUS, you may “approve for removal” the update to have your clients uninstall the update if they have already had it installed.
The problem was reported across TechNet, Microsoft forums, and other locations across the web. Information gathered pointed to KB3114717, on computers with Windows 7-Windows 10, while only the 32-bit (recommended) version of Office is affected and Office 2016 is not impacted.
KB3114717 implemented the following fixes:
- Includes translations for several terms in multiple languages to improve the accuracy of meaning.
- Adds telemetry that will help root the cause how rendering stops working when the system is running low on memory.
- Fixes the following issues:
- Assume that you open an Excel worksheet that’s being used by another user and select to be notified when it’s available. Then, you make changes to the worksheet when it is available for edit. In this situation, you are prompted to discard or save the worksheet as a new worksheet because another user has changed it. This issue occurs even if other users have not changed the worksheet.
- An Office add-in that overrides the default functionalities, such as copy or paste, and uses a delay loading can’t be loaded in Office 2013 applications.
- When you open an IRM-protected document by using the Edit permission in Word 2013, the Edit Document option on the View tab which should be available is disabled.
But, it looks like those changes will have to wait until they can get the bugs worked out so that Word and other Office 2013 applications are still usable.