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Sorry, something went wrong and Word is unable to start. (24)

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Friday, March 15, 2013 4:44 PM

Hello,

I recently installed Office 2013 RTM on one of my client's computer.  Word was running fine right after the install yesterday but now it's not.  Upon launch I get the error "Sorry, something went wrong and Word is unable to start. (24)"  

I've tried and failed:

-rebooting

-ran the office repair installation

-tried to launch Word in safe mode 

Thank You,

Nghi Huynh

All replies (20)

Monday, March 18, 2013 6:19 AM ✅Answered

Hi,

This error may also occur if the Office installation is corrupted. 

Do you have multiple version of Office installed in the computer? 

Step 1:

You may run the fix it from the article below to remove corrupt Office 2013 keys from the computer:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501

Note: Try to save the fix it tool to the desktop and then run it to remove Office.

If fix it tool failed to run, you may try the manual removal of Office 2013 step from the above article. 

Step 2:

Try the steps from the section ‘Start an In Private browser session’ in the article below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2811180

Once you complete the above mentioned steps, you may download Office 2013 using the link below and install it using the subscription license and verify the status

https://officesetup.getmicrosoftkey.com/

https://office.microsoft.com/MyAccount.aspx 

I hope the above steps help. If you need further assistance on this particular issue or any other Office related issues let us know and we will be glad to assist you.

Jaynet Zhang
TechNet Community Support


Wednesday, April 3, 2013 8:32 PM

Hi,

I have the same problem. I have Office 365 Home Premium and want to know if I uninstall and install again, will this take up another one of my five available licenses for my subscription?

Thanks


Saturday, September 28, 2013 3:28 AM

go to your myaccount page, and click on deactivate below one of ur installs and u will get back ur license, after that click on install again and save and run the file, u wont lose any installs


Friday, July 11, 2014 6:28 PM | 16 votes

I just went through this... receiving 2 different errors:  "Sorry, something went wrong and Word is unable to start. (24)"  and an Excel error about being out of memory... I turned auto preview off in explorer. In Windows 8, open an explorer window, click on the view tab and deselect the "preview pane" button. Both issues have gone away. 


Sunday, August 3, 2014 6:47 AM | 1 vote

Thanx  man your idea works grate for me...

can not use the preview pane but no more error (24) in word ....

i think its win 8.1 or 8 Microsoft bug

 i tried every solution but only yours works


Thursday, August 21, 2014 8:43 PM | 1 vote

Thank you so much!  This was the only solution that worked for me too.


Tuesday, January 20, 2015 8:31 PM | 2 votes

Oh My Goodness!!! such a simple stupid thing! Worked like a charm no more Error message!!!

Thank you it was driving me crazy.


Monday, March 23, 2015 3:59 PM | 1 vote

Wow!

I had a unhandled Excel error for over 5 weeks, spent so much time looking, googling, trying different options, but since I rarely use Word I had ignored that error until today.

You saved my life, jpidgie! Our IT dept's response was "well, you did something, maybe it's these 33554 lines in Excel" (which is standard now, since ?2010?2008).

The preview pane is just a little to lose, but so much easier than dealing with the constant Excel errors and the occasional word is unable to start error.

Thank you!Thank you!


Saturday, March 28, 2015 2:56 AM | 1 vote

After a reboot all of my Office software was suddenly failing with this and similar errors on my Windows 7 laptop (probably because of a botched self-update).  Rebooting didn't help.  The fix was to run Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features - Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 - Change - Online Repair (Quick Repair didn't work).  Took a good hour over broadband.  FYI.


Wednesday, October 7, 2015 7:37 PM

You guys are crazy - you post the same information over and over - even though people says it doesn't work.

Try loading office on your computer - and run it with a few hundred documents, and see what happens.

It's crazy, to uninstall and reinstall only to get the same error  it's almost as crazy as having to pay an annual feed to use office.  The 21st century 'robber barons'


Friday, November 20, 2015 12:57 PM

Thanks for sharing, this worked for me.


Tuesday, December 15, 2015 7:48 PM | 1 vote

THanks!  That is exactly what the issue was for me.  It was affecting both Word and PPT 2013.  Microsoft, please fix this!!


Monday, March 27, 2017 9:49 PM

That fix works for me in Windows 10 - deselected preview pane and now all good - thanks


Thursday, April 20, 2017 9:45 PM | 4 votes

I found this on another site and it completely worked:

after searching the web for an hour trying to find a solution, I finally found one.

http://www.itcrumbs.com/?p=574

To fix these errors and repair the preview pane, run Regedit as administrator and delete these registry keys:

Microsoft Excel previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\00020827-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

Microsoft PowerPoint previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\65235197-874B-4A07-BDC5-E65EA825B718}

Microsoft Word previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}

Microsoft Visio previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\21E17C2F-AD3A-4b89-841F-09CFE02D16B7}


Thursday, November 16, 2017 8:17 AM

Hi,

This is Gorakh, I have the solution for this issue. I have uploaded one video to youtube.

search below query in youtube.

Something went wrong and word was unable to start. (24)

Note: My channel name: How To Repair


Thursday, December 28, 2017 4:57 PM

This ^


Saturday, August 11, 2018 5:33 AM | 1 vote

I found this on another site and it completely worked:

after searching the web for an hour trying to find a solution, I finally found one.

http://www.itcrumbs.com/?p=574

To fix these errors and repair the preview pane, run Regedit as administrator and delete these registry keys:

Microsoft Excel previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\00020827-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

Microsoft PowerPoint previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\65235197-874B-4A07-BDC5-E65EA825B718}

Microsoft Word previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\84F66100-FF7C-4fb4-B0C0-02CD7FB668FE}

Microsoft Visio previewer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\21E17C2F-AD3A-4b89-841F-09CFE02D16B7}

Thanx Alot Sarah. This is the right solution. No need to turn off preview pane.


Friday, February 22, 2019 2:52 AM

Fantastic! This just fixed the issue.

Many thanks


Tuesday, July 16, 2019 2:48 PM

Before you try the 20 complicated things I did before finding the solution, try this one:

https://youtu.be/Whw7IiD6ySE

You simply remove the "preview document" setting in File Explorer.

Thanks to Colin Durrant!


Tuesday, July 16, 2019 2:55 PM

Try a simple solution before wasting more of your time. Colin Durrant posted this short video on YouTube that actually solved my problem when many other replies did not:

https://youtu.be/Whw7IiD6ySE

view > preview (turn preview feature off) in File Explorer before launching the file.

Don't download any software promising to fix the problem. It's most like a virus.