If you encounter similar errors while trying to prepare Office documents. please try the following on the server.

Remove Too Many Office Processes

This could be a build of too many Office processes, which could have ended up as zombie ones if they crashed or couldn't be interacted with due to corrupt or problematic documents attempted to be processed previously. To clear these, try running the command prompt as an Administrator user and type this and then see if that resolves it:

taskkill /f /im:winword.exe
taskkill /f /im:excel.exe
taskkill /f /im:powerpnt.exe

On certain versions of Office, you might also see an excessive amount of OfficeC3RClient.exe processes running in Task Manager.

If you are seeing that, run this to clear those as too many of these running might also impact the server:

taskkill /f /im:OfficeC2RClient.exe

However, that last point may indicate a problem running Word which leads on to...

Does Word/Excel/PowerPoint run?

If it doesn't run it may need fixing. First of all, if you see this error:

This error would suggest that the Offlce Click 2 Run service is not running so check Rin > Services.msc to see if that is showing as running. If you start it and it stops straight away, check the event logs. If you see something like this:

Faulting application name: OfficeClickToRun.exe, version: 16.0.14334.20344, time stamp: 0x68df407f
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.14393.8688, time stamp: 0x6930ff99
Exception code: 0xc06d007e
Fault offset: 0x0000000000026ea8
Faulting process id: 0x1600
Faulting application start time: 0x01dc86eedab8baf3
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun\OfficeClickToRun.exe
Faulting module path: C:\windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: acb95aef-af36-4e3d-8024-dd8a593b535f
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Then you can try to repair the Click To Run part by doing this:

1. Press Win + R
2. Run:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\16.0

3. Look for these folders and rename them to have .old after their name (don’t delete):

• OfficeFileCache
• OfficeTelemetry
• Office\ClickToRun

4. Try starting Word again.

If the Click-to-Run service is corrupted, this forces it to rebuild its streaming cache.

If those folders are not there then this suggests this is either a very different version of Office, which case if you go up a level you might see another folder number. You can also check the version in use here, by right clicking Word in the start menu and opening the location. If you get the Start menu shortcuts, do that again on that and that will give you the folder word is in and if that says 16.0, then we are looking at the same Office version here. So, if the version is the same and those folders are missing, then this is likely too corrupt to attempt to repair.

An attempt to fully repair Office by going to Settings > Installed Apps and selecting the Office entry and selecting change > full repair, can be made but this will likely give:

If so, at that point, this would need escalating to Cloud Ops. In a previous case of this only a file/folder named "officec2rclient.exe_Rules" was present in that office folder and it was suggested that the next step, especially for fixing that situation would be to Run Microsoft’s SaRA Office Uninstaller. This tool removes all corrupted Click‑to‑Run components that normal uninstallers cannot remove. Note that that this may require a server reboot. There are conflicting indications documented on this but rebooting the server would clearly impact PR so this may need to be considered before moving forward

Download here (Microsoft official): 👉 https://aka.ms/SaRA-officeUninstall
Run it and choose:

• Office Uninstall
• Let it complete fully
• Reboot the PC (of if trying to avoid that, if not prompted to reboot, you may wish to do this on a second attempt, if doing it without rebooting didn't fix it)

This forces Windows to remove:

• Broken Click‑to‑Run streaming files
• Corrupted registry entries
• Stuck Office virtualization layers
• Old versions still registered but missing components

That should get Office working again.

Desktop folder

If Office is working fine, then try this:

For a 64-bit Office installation, you need to create a Desktop folder here:

And here for 32-bit Office installation:

DCOM Config

If none of the above fixes this, then this is the next thing to try:

1. Launch the Component Services console, by clicking Start > Run and then typing this and hitting enter:

   dcomcnfg
   (Note that you may need to run this as Administrator to be sure you see the Microsoft Office entries and to make the required changes)

2. Expand Console Root > Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config

3. Look for the following Office applications and then right-click to select Properties, one at a time:

   

4. On the Security tab, under Launch and Activation Permissions, select Customize and click Edit

5. For the user that TaraService is running as, click Add to select the user account and then click OK; This should also be done for the user that the web application is running as, although if following the installation guides, this should be the same user anyway. If using an older installation that has the default identity in IIS for the application, add the IIS_IUSRS group instead.

6. Grant the account(s) the permission to Local Launch and Local Activation and then click OK

   

7. On the Identity tab, for the specific Windows user account that TaraService is running as, select This user instead and supply the necessary credentials. (If using a legacy installation where it is running as a system user, select The interactive user.)

   

8. Repeat for each of the Office applications highlighted in the step 3 screenshot.