Microsoft Word stuck on Processing…

If Microsoft Word gets stuck on Processing when opening or saving, the solutions provided in this article will surely help you. This issue usually occurs with Word documents saved in OneDrive. Corrupted Office files and cache are some possible causes of this problem.

Microsoft Word stuck on Processing when opening or saving

Use these fixes if Microsoft Word gets stuck on Processing when opening or saving:

1. Update Office
2. Clear the Office cache
3. Reset OneDrive
4. Disconnect and reconnect your account
5. Open the Word document in OneDrive online
6. Disable Auto Save
7. Disable Protected View
8. Repair Office
9. Roll Back or Reinstall Office

All these fixes are explained below in detail.

1] Update Office

Corrupted Office files can cause this problem. Updating Office can help. You can manually check for Office updates. If the updates are available, they will start installing automatically.

2] Clear the Office cache

Corrupt Office cache files can cause Word or other Office applications to get stuck on Processing. Therefore, the next fix is to clear the Office cache.

3] Reset OneDrive

Since this issue is associated with the Word documents saved in OneDrive, resetting OneDrive can fix it. You can reset OneDrive by running a command in the Run command box.

Press the Win + R keys, copy the following command, and paste it into the Run command box. Click OK after that:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset

If the above command gives you an error, use this command:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset'

If you still get an error, try this command:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset

After resetting OneDrive, check if the issue occurs.

4] Disconnect and reconnect your account

If the problem occurs on your school or work account, disconnect and reconnect that account.

5] Open the Word document in OneDrive online

If the Word document is corrupted, it will not open. To check this, open your web browser, log in to OneDrive, and open the Word document. If the document opens in your web browser, it is not corrupted. Now, try these steps:

1. Go to the location where the file is saved.
2. Click on the three dots and select Open > Open in app. The document will open in Word installed on your PC.

If the document does not open in your web browser, it might be corrupted. Try to repair the corrupted Word file.

6] Disable Auto Save

Sometimes, Auto Save causes issues. The Auto Save feature is available for Office documents saved in OneDrive. If you experience issues, you can disable it. To disable this feature, open your Word document in Safe Mode. If it opens, disable the Auto Save feature by turning off the respective button on the top left side.

If this fixes the issue, you can keep it disabled until the next Office or Windows Update. Until then, you will need to manually save your Word documents.

7] Disable Protected View

Since the problem is occurring with the Word documents saved on OneDrive, you can disable the Protected View by opening the Word documents saved locally on your hard disk.

Follow these steps:

1. Open Word and click Options.
2. Select Trust Center > Trust Center Settings.
3. Select Protected View and uncheck all three checkboxes on the right side.
4. Click OK.

8] Repair Office

You can also try repairing Office. Run an Online repair and see if it helps.

9] Roll back ot Reinstall Office

Sometimes, issues occur due to a problematic update. This might be the case with you. Office installs updates automatically without letting you know because the Automatic update option is enabled by default. You can try to roll back Office to the previous version. After rolling it back to the earlier version, disable Automatic Updates to prevent Office from installing updates automatically.

When Microsoft releases an Office update in the future, you can update Office to the latest version and enable Automatic Updates again.

Rolling Back Office to the previous version should work. If not, you can reinstall Office.

Before uninstalling, ensure that you have the license key, as it will be required to reactivate Office. Suppose you have linked your Office license with your Microsoft account. In that case, you can download the Office installer file from your Microsoft account, and you need not enter the product activation key after reinstalling it.

That’s it. I hope this helps.

Why does Microsoft Word freeze?

There can be many reasons why Microsoft Word freezes. Your computer may not have sufficient resources to run Office applications, or the Office files may be corrupted. Extremely large Word files are prone to freezing. Apart from that, faulty add-ins and printer issues also cause Word to freeze.

How do you exit a Word processing application?

To exit a Word processing application, click on the cross icon on the top right side. If the Word processing application is frozen and not responding, you can force quit it using the Task Manager. However, by doing this, you may lose unsaved data.

Read next: Word crashes or freezes when printing.