Microsoft Office has been one of the most popular suites of applications on the Mac for three decades. It’s also one of the most unpopular – Mac users really do have a love/hate relationship with it. Lots of people install it, use it, then get so annoyed with it they uninstall it. However, uninstalling Office isn’t as easy as it should be, so here’s a step-by-step guide to show you how to uninstall every part of Microsoft Office.
If you want to uninstall Microsoft Office 2016 Mac and you have placed all the Microsoft Office files in the dock, you just need to follow these simple steps. Step 1: Just go to the Microsoft Office 2016 application on your dock. Step 2: Press CTRL and click on the application. How to uninstall Microsoft Office for Mac All apps made for mac from the year 2011 and older are still available but won’t be as reliable as a newer mac and could potentially contain harmful viruses.
What is Microsoft Office?
Office is a suite of tools that comprises: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneDrive. To use such apps, you can either subscribe to Office 365 on Microsoft's website and download the apps from there or download the individual apps from the Mac App Store and buy a subscription as an in-app purchase.
Subscriptions are annual and there are several different tiers, each of which provides a different level of service with regard to the number of devices you can install Office apps on.
Why is it so difficult to uninstall Office?
Good question! On Windows PCs, Microsoft offers an uninstall utility that allows you to remove Office or any Office app with a few clicks. However, on a Mac, you have to do it the manual way. That means not just removing the app binaries themselves, but hunting down all the other ‘junk’ files that Microsoft Office installs on your Mac.
Backup your data
Once you’ve uninstalled Office, you will obviously not be able to open any files you have that are in Microsoft formats like .doc, .xls, or .ppt in their parent applications. So, before you uninstall Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, make sure that you have another way of opening those files if you need them.
That could be another application that supports those file formats or another computer that has Office installed on it. If that’s not possible, you should open each file in Office and export it in a format that can be read in other applications, such as .rtf for Word documents. Don’t uninstall anything until you have made sure you will still be able to read and edit your files.
When you uninstall Outlook on your Mac, you will also remove all of its data, including email messages and attachments. If you use an IMAP server or an account like iCloud or Gmail, there’s nothing to worry about, your messages and attachments will still be on the server. However, if you have downloaded messages and attachments and deleted them from the mail server, or if you use a POP3 mail server, you should backup up all your messages and attachments before you uninstall Outlook. You can do this by exporting messages from Outlook in mbox format. You should also consider making a copy of the Containers folder described below, just in case.
Before you go ahead and attempt the manual uninstallation described below, there is another, much easier way. CleanMyMac X allows you to uninstall Office apps, or any other app, with just a couple of clicks, using its uninstaller tool. Here’s how it works:
- Download and launch CleanMyMac X — get a free version here
- Choose the Uninstaller tool from the sidebar.
- In the window on the right, check the box next to the Office apps (Word, Excel, etc) you want to uninstall.
- Press Uninstall
CleanMyMac X now removes not just the apps themselves, but all the associated junk files, saving you a huge amount of time and effort.
You can now check whether there are any leftover files.
- Go to the Uninstaller tool in CleanMyMac X.
- Click on Leftovers.
- If there are any files listed, check the box next to them and press Uninstall.
How to uninstall Office 365 on Mac
To uninstall Office 365, you need to uninstall each app and depending on which version of Office you are using, the process is slightly different.
Uninstall Office 2011
- Navigate to your Applications folder.
- Select Microsoft Excel
- Hold down the Command key and select Outlook, Powerpoint, and Word.
- Drag them all to the Trash and empty it.
This will uninstall Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook from your Mac.
Uninstall Office 365 2016
Uninstalling Office 2016 is more complicated than uninstalling the 2011 version, because you need to locate files in several different folders and move them to the Trash.
- Go to your Applications folder and select Microsoft Excel.
- Hold down the Command key and click on the following apps: OneNote; Outlook; PowerPoint; Word; One Drive.
- With all those apps selected, drag them to the Trash or Control-click on one of the apps and choose Move to Trash from the menu.
- In the Finder, click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder, or press Command+Shift+G.
- In the box that opens, type: ~/Library and press Go.
- Locate the Containers folder and open it.
- Locate each of the folders listed below and drag them to the Trash (some of them may not be present)
com.microsoft.errorreporting
com.microsoft.Excel
com.microsoft.netlib.shipassertprocess
com.microsoft.Office365ServiceV2
com.microsoft.Outlook
com.microsoft.Powerpoint
com.microsoft.RMS-XPCService
com.microsoft.Word
com.microsoft.onenote.mac - Click the back arrow in the Finder window to go back to ~/Library and open the Group Containers folder.
- Locate the folders below and move them to the Trash (again, some may not be present).
UBF8T346G9.ms
UBF8T346G9.Office
UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost - Empty the Trash
- If any Office icons are in the Dock, right-click on them and choose Options>Remove from Dock.
- Restart your Mac
You have now uninstalled Office 2016 from your Mac.
If your reason for uninstalling Office from your Mac is to save space, consider using CleanMyMac X to get rid of junk files before you uninstall. CleanMyMac X is an expert at getting rid of files you didn’t even know were there and can recover tens of gigabytes of disk space without having to uninstall anything.
If your reason for uninstalling Office from your Mac is to save space, consider using CleanMyMac X to get rid of junk files before you uninstall. CleanMyMac X is an expert at getting rid of files you didn’t even know were there and can recover tens of gigabytes of disk space without having to uninstall anything.
Uninstalling Microsoft Office is straightforward if you are using Office 2011. But Office 2016 is much more complicated to get rid of. There is no official uninstaller, so you have to track down files and folders manually and drag them to the Trash. A much easier solution is to use the CleanMyMac X’s Uninstaller tool which can uninstall applications with just a couple of clicks, removing all their associated files.
If you are MAC user, you must be familiar with the fact that installing applications on your PC is a very easy task. On the other hand, uninstalling the applications is not so simple and straight forward. Although, it may sound little unlikely, but it is not. Since trying to uninstall application in Mac may seem to be easy but sometimes it not the case.
1. Why Do You Need to Uninstall Microsoft Office on Mac
If you are using you MAC computer for academic activities or business purposes, you would tend to install Office file because such applications are essential for your writing assignments, making presentation or saving data as an excel sheet. As these applications are updated on regular basis, you may want to delete or uninstall the previous version and install updated versions as soon as they are available. Besides, some users simply do not want to use the Microsoft Office anymore, as they may not like that there are not enough shortcut keys or the formulas in MS Excel make their system slow.
Since the MS Office is primarily designed to be installed and used on Windows PC, Mac users may not always be happy with MS office. The most probable issue is when you run MS office on MAC, you would not have all the shortcut keys that are available for any user of Windows running the same software. As another example, you cannot select the whole line pressing CTRL key whenever you enter an equation in Excel. It becomes slow as it is not specifically designed for MAC. Having such issues, many people would like to completely uninstall MS office from their systems. If you are one of those users who want to uninstall the MS office 2011/2016 from your MAC, you will find the answers in this guide.
2. How to Uninstall Microsoft Office on Mac
2.1 Uninstall MS Office for Mac Applications
If you follow these simple steps, you can remove MS office from your MAC with ease.
Step 1. Find 'Applications'on your MAC PC in the Finder option.
Step 2. Press Command + click to select all the applications that are related to MS Office.
Step 3. While pressing the CTRL, now you need to right click on all the selected MS office applications that you need to remove from your system.
Step 4. Click on 'Move to Trash'and the selected files will be deleted from your system.
2.2 Remove Office from Dock
It is possible that you put some of the applications of MS office in your dock. If this is the case, go to each MS office application, press CTRL and click. Go the 'Option' and click on 'Remove from Dock'.
Restart your system in order for the changes to take effect.
2.3 Remove Files from Your User Library Folder
First, you need to set the Finder view option if you want to remove files from 'Library Folder'. Follow these steps to remove Office files from user library folder.
Step 1. Press Command, Shift and h key in the Finder.
Step 2. Click on View and select as List, in the top on the Finder Menu. Then click on View >Show View Options.
Step 3. Select 'Show Library Folder' in View Options, and click on Save.
Step 4. Now, go back to the Finder and open Library >Containers.
Step 5. Press CTRL and click all these listed folders and select the option of 'Move to Trash'.
(Note: if you want to save or keep your data, you need to make a back up of those folders before deleting them)
com.microsoft.errorreporting
com.microsoft.Excel
com.microsoft.Outlook
com.microsoft.Powerpoint
com.microsoft.RMS-XPCService
com.microsoft.Word
com.microsoft.netlib.shipassertprocess
com.microsoft.Office365ServiceV2
com.microsoft.onenote.mac
Step 6. Open the Group Container by clicking the back arrow to go back to the Library Folder.
Step 7. Press the CTRL key and click each of the listed folders (if present), then click on 'Move to Trash'.
UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost
UBF8T346G9.ms
UBF8T346G9.Office
3. How to Install Microsoft Office on MAC
After the uninstallation, you may still need to install the Microsoft office 2016 or other versions on your Mac in the future. If so, you can follow the steps below.
First, you need to sign in to your account to download your MS office file. Go to www.office.com and select the option 'Sign in'.
Sign in with the user account that is associated with the Office version. It could be a Microsoft account or a work or school account. After signing into your associated account, you need to follow the steps that match your account type and then download your files.
Step 1. Once the downloading is finished, opening Finderand go to Downloads to double click the file named as 'Microsoft Office installer.pkg' (the name may slightly vary).
Step 2. When the first screen of the installer appears, select Continue to begin the process of installation.
Step 3. Next, review the license agreement of MS office and click on 'Continue' and then select the option 'Agree'.
Step 4. Then you need to select the option of how you want to install MS office, click Continue.
Step 5. The next screen will display the disk requirements. You may also change the installation location, next click on 'Install'.
Step 6. Next, if prompted, you need to enter your login password of your MAC system and click 'Install Software'. It will start installing the software.
When the installation is finished, click on 'Close'.
Step 1. To launch newly installed MS office app and start the activation process, click the 'Launchpad' in the dock to display your installed apps.
Step 2. Click the icon of 'Microsoft Word', it will open 'What's New' window automatically when you first launch the application.
How To Remove Microsoft Office 2019 For Mac
Step 3. Click on 'Get Started' to start the activation process.
Step 4. To pin the office app icons to the dock, go to the Finder >Applications and open any office app that you want to dock. In the dock, press CTRL and click, or right click the app icon, then choose 'Options' and then click on 'Keep in Dock'.
Uninstall Office 2011 Mac
While using MS office apps, if you protected your files using a password and you somehow forgot your password. You can use 'Passper:Password Recovery Expert'tool. That gives you complete solution to recover or remove the password of your locked files and Windows. Passper can open your password protected files, including Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoints files as well as ZIP and RAR files.