Safe Mode

Safe mode is a mode where Office temporarily starts with a fresh user profile and disables hardware acceleration. It helps to restore a non-working Office instance.

To access this command...

Choose Help - Restart in Safe Mode.

Start Office from command line with --safe-mode option

Start Office from Office (Safe Mode) start menu entry (Windows only)

What can I do in safe mode?

Once in safe mode, you will be shown a dialogue box offering three user profile restoration options

Continue in Safe Mode

This option will let you work with Office as you are used to, but using a temporary user profile. It also means that all configuration changes made to the temporary user profile will be lost after restart.

Restart in Normal Mode

Choosing Restart in Normal Mode will discard all changes, terminate safe mode and start Office again in normal mode. Use this option if you got here by accident.

Apply Changes and Restart

The dialogue box offers multiple changes to the user profile that can be made to help restoring Office to working state. They get more radical from top down so you should try them successively one after another. Choosing this option applies selected changes

Restore from backup

Office keeps backups of previous configurations and activated extensions. Use this option to return to the previous state if your problems are likely to be caused by recent changes to configuration or extensions.

Configure

You can disable all extensions installed by the user. You can also disable hardware acceleration. Activate this option if you experience start-up crashes or visual glitches, they are often related to hardware acceleration.

Uninstall extensions

Sometimes Office cannot be started due to extensions blocking or crashing. This option allows you to disable all extensions installed by the user as well as shared and bundled extensions. Uninstalling shared and bundled extensions should be used with caution. It will only work if you have the necessary system access rights.

Reset to factory settings

If all else fails, you can reset your user profile to the factory default. The first option Reset settings and user customisations resets all configuration and UI changes, but keeps things like your personal dictionary, templates etc. The second option will reset your entire profile to the state when you first installed Office.

If you could not resolve your problem by using safe mode, click on Advanced expander. You will find instructions how to get further help there.