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filmboy

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 1, 2013
48
11
I just upgraded the OS on my 2020 Mac Air from Ventura 13.6.6 to Sonoma 14.7.1 because my email browsers were getting slower and slower. And the upgrade solved that problem. However, my 2021 version of Microsoft Word and Excel documents now take 30-plus seconds to open and I frequently get a spinning beach ball. This also happens when opening jpgs.

Oddly, my 2021 Mac Studio runs the same 2021 version of Microsoft Office and the same Sonoma OS but with none of the problems running Word and Excel that I'm experiencing on my 2020 Mac Air.

A Microsoft senior support technician and I spent over an hour trying to remedy this. We deleted all the problematic 2021 Microsoft Office applications and associated ‘containers’ and reloaded the latest versions of the Microsoft website. We also turned off all auto updates, background saves to the cloud, etc, so nothing is running in the background. Regardless, my problems persist.

I discovered a couple of Reddit threads going back 8 months that document exactly the same problems that I’ve been experiencing, namely: Office 2021 is not compatible with Mac OS Sonoma. Apparently, some folks have had success by running earlier versions of Microsoft Word/Excel. But I'm not ready to try that quite yet.

Apple techs want me to update the OS on my Mac Air to Sequoia, but I’d prefer to have both my computers on the same OS. And I generally exercise caution updating to the newest OS until 6 months after its release. Again, Microsoft Word/Excel running just fine on my 2021 Mac Studio--on Sonoma. So why mess with it? I just want to make Word/Excel work on my 2020 Mac Air, ideally with Sonoma OS.

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
Issue could be Gatekeeper, which scans executables on launch. Slow launches because of Gatekeeper typically are because you have slow DNS resolution. Try adding slow launching Microsoft application to the list in Settings > Privacy & Security > Developer Tools to bypass Gatekeeper check.
 
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Issue could be Gatekeeper, which scans executables on launch. Slow launches because of Gatekeeper typically are because you have slow DNS resolution. Try adding slow launching Microsoft application to the list in Settings > Privacy & Security > Developer Tools to bypass Gatekeeper check.
I tried this, but now I get a spinning ball after it opens. So I'm going to undo this. I appreciate the suggestion.
 
Last edited:
I tried this, but now I get a spinning ball after it opens. So I'm going to undo this. I appreciate the suggestion.
PROBLEM SOLVED!!! All I had to do was update to the latest Mac OS. Works like a charm now.
 
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