# Office 365 >  >  Excel 2016 freezing up, a total disaster

## JytteC

I got a new PC, Windows 10 and Office 2016. LORD HELP ME, because Microsoft don't seem able to.

I have had Office 2003 for 12 years, running on Windows XP for eight years. I use Excel extensively all day long for my work. Have many files running simultaneously and interconnected, and many macros to streamline my work. And it has worked flawlessly all those years. I loved my Excel and XP.

THEN I needed a new PC. The files got bigger and bigger, and my old machine had a hard time keeping up. Time for a new one, bigger and faster. Got my new PC on Dec.28,2015. I knew already that it was born with Windows 10,and having seen Windows 8.1 on another PC, 10 seems like an improvement. After installing Classic Shell I'm back to having a PC I can live with, and 'up to date'. So far so good.

Back in the day I paid good money for Office 2003, and it's still excellent. But now I'm forced to get a new Office, as Windows no longer support the old program. I just love having to pay over and over for the same software, thank you very much. Then I discover I can only buy a 'key' not the software. Why in God's name you can't buy a disc with the software any more is beyond me. Now, key in hand, you have to download the software, taking FOREVER, as I live in the middle of nowhere in Germany.

First shock: All my menus are gone. Instead I have a ribbon, that takes up way too much space, and is utterly useless, as I now need 3-4 clicks to do things I previously did with 1 or 2. Spending time on setting up a quick access bar has solved some of that at least, but I still lament the good old menus!

Second shock: The damned thing keeps freezing up, leaving me no alternative but to shoot it down via task manager. It is completely unstable. I crashes 10 times or more during a work day, leaving me no alternative than to basically save and copy every few seconds, or else start all over on what I'm doing. At least I can recover from the crashes this way.

3rd shock: Most of my macros no longer worked. Had to go through through each and every one and make changes, and I have a lot of macros. That's a couple of days of my life I won't get back. And still there are issues. Printing to Pdf, that I've been doing for many years without a problem, now creates huge files, more than 10 times bigger than before. I can't have that. Only option I have at the moment is to do all these 'print to pdf' manually, which defeats the purpose of macros and takes way too long.

My workday has turned into a nightmare! When I have a customer on the phone, they don't really want to hear 'sorry but my software just crashed so you'll have to wait'.

I just spent a pile of money to get the biggest, newest machine and software out there, and what I got is a computer that can't do the work.

Time to contact Microsoft Tech Support. So after a long day's work, around 5 pm, I did. Got hold of a tech on chat. Explained up and down the issues. Tech started having a look. Chat ended abruptly. I simply got kicked off the connection. What, Microsoft can't even keep their support lines up and running?

Techs 2, 3 and 4.... having to explain all over again to each of course, same result. Most of what I got while I WAS connected was 'I don't know this, maybe you should call the german hotline, here's the number and they're open 24/7'. Well they're not! They're open the exact same day-hours I am, so when am I supposed to call them? While I have my customers calling me???

Then I figure this ain't gonna work, so go on various Microsoft tech support pages listing problems like this (lo and behold I'm not the only one). ONE of the brilliant advice they give is to go to your software listing in control panel and run a 'repair online' on Office. So I did. Well.... it did NOT repair anything. What it did was give me an error message, and then WIPE Office off my PC! I'm not kidding.

So now I'm faced with having to re-install Office. Go to my account page and go through the ropes. Error message 'no permission'. Twice. THAT's when my biggest melt down hit! Anybody from Microsoft within my reach at that point in time would have been a head shorter, I can promise you that.

Back to good ol' tech support. Tech no.5 first of all figured out there was a mess on Microsoft's side (big surprise), and after some searching she managed to find the software that matched my key. Installing. Error message. Then took remote control of my PC to do some cleanup of things left behind by the so-called 'repair'. Well that managed to crash my PC, and that was the end of that connection. No.5, as I warned her of the disconnect risk, gave me a re-join link, but THEY DON'T WORK, they just get you a new tech. Useless.

Mind you, it's now around 11pm, I've been on the computer for over 15 hours fighting these problems. With tech support for over 6 hours, and I still have no software at all. I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep my usually friendly and polite manner of speaking.

Enter tech no.6. She first had to take an earful from me. She took it like a trooper. Apologized profusely (they all do, and of what use is that? Don't apologize, FIX it.) Anyway, no.6 was more astute, gave me a case number so at least I didn't have to explain all over again. Then went to work. I think no.5 did manage to clean up the mess from repair, and she also found the right software, so no.6 was able to get an install started. It did install, and did pick up my previous settings, so that was good. I had some more questions, and then....  my internet connection died. Oh thank you so much GERMAN TELECOM!

After an hour my connection came back, and I got an email form No.6 asking if Office was up and running. I appreciated that, and told her it was. At 2am I crawled into bed, utterly exhausted.

So, I get up this morning, gingerly starting up Excel, hoping for the best, but not trusting any of it, so I'm still doing my saving/copying/printing routines over and over again. It's a light day, so a few hours go by and I'm starting to think I'm out of the woods.... then CRASH. Back to square one.

Tech No.6's take on things was that Office was installed before I upgraded to version 1511 of Windows. And that installing clean AFTER the 1511 update would do the trick. Well, it didn't.

So I ask you, any of you, what on earth am I supposed to do now? I have work to do, and Microsoft has left me with a software that doesn't work and no way of going back.

I also would like to ask, why in God's name they release software this unstable???????????????? And with no warnings, nor any fixes in place. Tech support are as lost in the fog as I am.

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## BlindAlley

Sounds like your having a bad day dude - best of luck - seriously I know the feeling of "Oh, I will just do this upgrade before I start"

This helps me

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## Izandol

I may say that 2003 will work on 2010. It is "out of support" so no more bug fixes or security fixes, but perhaps is good trade-off. Or you may try to find copy of 2010 from a store - it is most stable version I think.

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## JytteC

Izandol, I appreciate your input. And I don't mean to be snippy, but buying a copy of 2010, when I just bought, not one but 3, keys for 2016? (have 3 PCs this must run on).
I got my files from 2003 into 2016 and saved in new format, xlsm mostly, without too many problems. And they're suddenly a 3rd the size they used to be, which was a surprise.
I also got most of my macro problems solved, all but one. But none of it does me any good if the program can't RUN without crashing.

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