microsoft support and recovery assistant taking forever

This usually takes a minute or two to complete. When you run a Quick Repair operation, Office will attempt simple repairs using local files already on your PC. That’s good because that’s what you’ll try next. The Quick Repair option, as shown in Figure 2, is selected by default.

Click Yes, and the built-in Office repair window appears. Once you’ve clicked Change, you may see a User Account Control window asking for permission to run the repair program.

IDG Figure 1: Pick Change in the pop-up menu to initiate repairs.

If you right-click on whatever version of Office you’re running (the version depicted in Figure 1 is Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise), you’ll see a pop-up menu that offers two options: Uninstall and Change. In Control Panel, select Programs > Programs and Features. Open Control Panel by typing con into the Windows Search box and selecting Control Panel from the results that appear. Office installations include a built-in repair tool, and that’s the first place to turn when things go awry. However, let’s return to Step 1 to start this process where it also usually ends. That has never failed in my experience, any time I’ve had to go that far. Spoiler alert! The absolute worst case requires running a cleanup tool on the current Office installation, followed by a clean install of a new copy of Office. In this story, I’ll take you through a series of progressively aggressive (and more time-consuming) repairs for Office apps in Windows based on the ongoing assumption that the previous step - whatever it may have been - didn’t work. This sort of thing does occur from time to time, and it is often quite easy to repair. Please relax, and don’t give in to panic or upset. You’re working on a document or a spreadsheet, or using email, and BAM! One of your Microsoft Office applications starts acting weird or stops responding. If one or more Office apps is acting glitchy, work your way through this series of repair maneuvers, starting with the simplest.

Microsoft support and recovery assistant taking forever