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After a Sequoia update, has anyone else had to manually set Word and Excel as the default apps for opening .docx and .xlsx files?

D

Droid13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 22, 2009
315
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United Kingdom
As per the subject line; neither Word nor Excel were recognised as standard apps for these file types and I had to do it manually (and against the advice that it wasn't known that these apps would open these files).

I have had to do this on more than one machine, both with Intel (i7) and Mac (M2) processors.

Very odd.

Just me or is this a thing?

EDIT: Intriguingly PowerPoint .pptx is wholly unaffected...
 
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No issue for my intel i9 MBP 16'. maybe you can try to re-install office?
 
Droid13 said:
As per the subject line; neither Word nor Excel were recognised as standard apps for these file types and I had to do it manually (and against the advice that it wasn't known that these apps would open these files).

I have had to do this on more than one machine, both with Intel (i7) and Mac (M2) processors.

Very odd.

Just me or is this a thing?
Click to expand...
Same issue. And really annoying as quicklook will not display any preview for these extensions
 
Reinstalling office does not help. Bug also present on Sequoia 15.1 latest beta
 
My Mac has properly associated both .docx and .xlsx files as Word and Excel documents (respectively) without needing to manually change the file associations. I am also running the latest 15.1 beta.
 
Miles Fu said:
No issue for my intel i9 MBP 16'. maybe you can try to re-install office?
Click to expand...

sigalf said:
Reinstalling office does not help. Bug also present on Sequoia 15.1 latest beta
Click to expand...

dmccloud said:
My Mac has properly associated both .docx and .xlsx files as Word and Excel documents (respectively) without needing to manually change the file associations. I am also running the latest 15.1 beta.
Click to expand...

So out of a sample size of four so far, half of us have an issue and the other half do not.

Even after associating .docx and .xlsx with Word and Excel respectively, Quicklook and Finder do not show or preview them the same way that they do with .doc and .xls files (which worked and continue to work fine without intervention).

EDIT: PowerPoint .pptx files are completed unaffected and work just fine as is.
 
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Issue not fixed in osx 15.1 beta 5. Pages and Numbers cannot open microsoft files. Quicklook cannot preview .xlsx and .docx files
 
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sigalf said:
Issue not fixed in osx 15.1 beta 5. Pages and Numbers cannot open microsoft files. Quicklook cannot preview .xlsx and .docx files
Click to expand...

I have submitted this issue via Apple Support and using the feedback form. I don't think there is more that I can personally do.
 
Droid13 said:
So out of a sample size of four so far, half of us have an issue and the other half do not.

Even after associating .docx and .xlsx with Word and Excel respectively, Quicklook and Finder do not show or preview them the same way that they do with .doc and .xls files (which worked and continue to work fine without intervention).

EDIT: PowerPoint .pptx files are completed unaffected and work just fine as is.
Click to expand...
I don't have any issues with file associations or quicklook on my M1 MBP, running version 16.89.1 (24091630).

How did you uninstall Office? Did you just delete the apps in the Applications folder? If so, you may want to try to delete everything MSOffice related and re-install.

Uninstall Office for Mac - Microsoft Support

Need to uninstall Office for Mac? It's quick and easy. Just follow these simple steps.
support.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com
 
gwang73 said:
I don't have any issues with file associations or quicklook on my M1 MBP, running version 16.89.1 (24091630).

How did you uninstall Office? Did you just delete the apps in the Applications folder? If so, you may want to try to delete everything MSOffice related and re-install.

Uninstall Office for Mac - Microsoft Support

Need to uninstall Office for Mac? It's quick and easy. Just follow these simple steps.
support.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com
Click to expand...

I haven’t gone down the uninstall - re-install route just yet; saving that task for later.
 
Same Issue here on the new macOS with the latest versions of Word and Excel. I can open files directly from the programs, but not from the finder. Also preview does not show Word or Excel files.
 
If you Ctrl-I on an .xlsx file to open the Info pane, go to the Open With section, does it show Excel as the program? If not, what if you change it and then hit "Use this application to open all documents like this one"?
Screenshot 2024-09-26 at 7.48.35 PM.png
 
It works but does not fix the icon nor the quicklook preview function for xls and docx files. Word and Excel can open the files directly however
 
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sigalf said:
It works but does not fix the icon nor the quicklook preview function for xls and docx files. Word and Excel can open the files directly however
Click to expand...
This has worked for me in the past, to restore the icons in Finder and quick look: find the process com.apple.quicklook.ThumbnailsAgent, quit it (or you may have to force quit it). Then relaunch Finder in the tray at the bottom (right-click with Option key held down)
 
donawalt said:
This has worked for me in the past, to restore the icons in Finder and quick look: find the process com.apple.quicklook.ThumbnailsAgent, quit it (or you may have to force quit it). Then relaunch Finder in the tray at the bottom (right-click with Option key held down)
Click to expand...
Thanks. Tried but no success
 
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donawalt said:
This has worked for me in the past, to restore the icons in Finder and quick look: find the process com.apple.quicklook.ThumbnailsAgent, quit it (or you may have to force quit it). Then relaunch Finder in the tray at the bottom (right-click with Option key held down)
Click to expand...

sigalf said:
I tried all the steps from this article. https://droidwin.com/macos-sequoia-issues-with-ms-word-and-excel-file-fixed/

It did not fix anything unfortunately. A full reinstall of MS Office does not fix the issue on OS X Sequoia.
Click to expand...

Nothing works to restore full function. I can open and close them ok after forcing Word and Excel to be the default apps but that is it - cannot do things like preview attachments in Outlook; this bug is a productivity killer.
 
Tried to flag this to Microsoft as well but unsure of how to actually do that. Has anyone seen anything useful from Microsoft about this? I have found a few things about Teams issues but not Word / Excel.

PowerPoint seems unscathed in all of this.
 
Droid13 said:
Nothing works to restore full function. I can open and close them ok after forcing Word and Excel to be the default apps but that is it - cannot do things like preview attachments in Outlook; this bug is a productivity killer.
Click to expand...
I'm having the exact same issue. Reinstall did not restore quicklook functionality. Very annoying.
 
This issue is still present with the latest OSX Sequoia 15.0.1 and 15.1 beta 6. This is really annoying…
 
Finally solved this issue. I realized I had the same problem on iOS 18.1 beta 6. Searched for an app called Whereby and deleted it. Solved immediately the issue on iOS. Then searched for the app on OSX which was burried in the Library hierarchy and deleted it as well. It immediately solved the issue on both platforms. How weird. Hope it help other users who face this issue.
 
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