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Word & PDF files not opening under Catalina

word and PDF files that I created in 2018 do now not open under Catalina. Neither PDFs nor word doc or docx.

Posted on Jul 8, 2020 9:53 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 8, 2020 10:16 AM

If you have any non-subscription version of MS Office earlier than 2019 you'll need to upgrade to Office 365 or the Office Home and Student 2019 versus.


As an alternative to Word try opening the Word file with the free, open-source LibreOffice app.


If you have a Catalina compatible MS Office try the following:


1 - Log into another admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac and see if the problem persists. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).


2 - boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 


5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 8, 2020 10:16 AM in response to björn_berlin

If you have any non-subscription version of MS Office earlier than 2019 you'll need to upgrade to Office 365 or the Office Home and Student 2019 versus.


As an alternative to Word try opening the Word file with the free, open-source LibreOffice app.


If you have a Catalina compatible MS Office try the following:


1 - Log into another admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac and see if the problem persists. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).


2 - boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 


Jul 9, 2020 9:16 AM in response to björn_berlin

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.


Copy the report



and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report


IMPORTANT:


Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck in the Etrecheck's Privacy preference pane so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:



Also click and read the About info to further permit full disk access.


Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine what might be causing the problem.




Word & PDF files not opening under Catalina

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