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I'm running Office 2013 Pro Plus 32-bit (MSI-based) on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. When trying to open an Excel, Word, or PowerPoint documents I get this error message:
Sorry, we can't perform this action. Incompatible Office products are installed on your machine. If you have an administrator, please contact them for help.
After clicking OK the file opens and functions normally.
Further, if I attempt to browse OneDrive or a SharePoint site through Word or Excel the same error is displayed. After clicking OK I can continue browsing the connected service. Unfortunately, removing the services doesn't solve the problem.
How can I fix this?
Additional Details
- The error is only displayed when opening the first document in the Office program. Once the error has been displayed, I can open other documents and don't get the error.
- I only get the error when opening documents stored on a mapped network drive. No error is displayed when opening documents stored on my local hard drive.
In the Applications and Services Logs/Microsoft Office Alerts
log I found an entry with event ID 300 and Source "Microsoft Office 15 Alerts" that has this text:
Microsoft Excel
Sorry, we can’t perform this action. Incompatible Office products are installed on your machine. If you have an administrator, please contact them for help.
P1: 702089
P2: 15.0.4693.1000
P3:
P4:
My research/Attempted Solutions:
- I tried deleting my Personal Macro workbook. No change.
- I found this Microsoft forum post which suggests uninstalling SharePoint Designer 2010, but I don't have that product installed.
- The forum refers to KB2920798, which I installed today, but I'm able to open my Office files, contrary to the KB's claim that
This update provides you an informative message when you cannot open an Office document
. I do not have any click-to-run Office products installed. - Over the weekend I installed SimCity 3000 Unlimited which is an older game. It installed "MS Access 97 SP2 Runtime. Update: Uninstalling this didn't help.
- I also installed available Windows Updates this weekend, about 20-30 of them to my recollection.
1Gotta love MS. "Incompatible Office products are installed on your machine..." Does it tell you what these offending products are? Nope. Of course not. Why would you need to know that. Still, marginally better than "An unknown error has occurred" which I get from time to time. – misha256 – 2015-02-16T20:20:07.057
1You have both 32- and 64-bit Office components and/or applications installed. This is an unsupported scenario. Also, don’t ever use 64-bit Office unless you’re looking for trouble. – Daniel B – 2015-02-16T20:38:12.150
I just deleted my answer as it's clearly wrong (no point polluting the forum). @DanielB is on the money I reckon. – misha256 – 2015-02-16T20:39:43.020
@DanielB I do? What makes you think I have any 64-bit Office products installed? – I say Reinstate Monica – 2015-02-16T20:50:32.907
@Twisty - I would bet money that you do. Because Office 2013 was the first major release of Office that actively promoted it. Unless you have a volume license for office you likely do have a Click-to-Run office product installed since that was the only consumer version most people have. You should try getting rid of that Access 97 runtime installation. – Ramhound – 2015-02-17T17:56:54.627
1@Ramhound I'll take the bet! ;) All of my Office products are Volume License and they're all the 32-bit versions. I was simply wondering if DanielB saw something in my post suggesting I might be wrong about that last point. – I say Reinstate Monica – 2015-02-17T18:02:55.193
@Ramhound I uninstalled the Access 97 runtime but the problem persists. I've discovered the problem only occurs if the file is on a mapped network drive. – I say Reinstate Monica – 2015-02-18T13:12:04.040
It looks like there's a new cause for this problem that might be related to a Windows 10 update. If I fix it I'll update my answer. – Todd Wilcox – 2015-08-12T15:13:04.133
Just to point out, uninstalling SimCity 3000 from my system removed the Comic Sans fonts, and it tried to remove Arial as well. – Gras Double – 2015-12-05T00:11:07.653
I recently signed up for Office 365 E5 and was logged in from Word briefly. The only recently installed new office component on my machine is the MS Office Access 2007 database engine. And yet, this error started to occur when I want to save to a Sharepoint drive that is mapped via Webdav. Uninstalling the Access 2007 component did not resolve it. – cdonner – 2016-02-11T14:26:39.593