File Explorer Opens Wrong File

[George Hurley]

I'm not even sure how to describe the problem I'm having, and that makes it hard to use Google to find an answer.

If I have multiple Word documents open, and then use File Explorer to open a document, the document I click on is NOT the document that opens. For instance, if I select "repair history.docx" while other documents are open but minimized, the document that opens will be one of the ones that is already open. The problem goes away if I close all of the open documents.

I've never experienced this problem before, but it recently started with a customer who is using Office Professional Plus 2016 Word applications. I tried some basic stuff - System File Checker, virus scan, restoring the defaults in File Explorer, going back to an earlier date in System Restore, but no luck. NOW - it's happening on my own new computer using Office Professional Plus 2019.

Does anyone have experience with this problem? Is there a name for it? I would be grateful for any suggestions for solving it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Run an online repair of the office install and reboot.

Yes, I've seen this before... usually it's on machines that have pending updates waiting to restart! But... here's the rub...

Office has its own updates! And 2016 in particular LOVES to get stuck... and when it does it stops updating correctly. As time goes on you almost wind up with a version of Office that's half patched across several different versions and all sorts of strange things start to happen.

The online repair will reinstall office and sort out the issue.

Your larger problem? If I haven't sold it myself... Office "Professional Plus" generally means pirated... In which case you're screwed. Pirated office doesn't work very well at all, and this is just one of the many side effects of it.