Along with cumulative updates KB3135173 and KB3135174, Microsoft also issued an update for Office 2013. The update was labeled as KB3114717, but since then the company decided to pull it, since it actually caused more harm than good to users of Office 2013, especially Word and Excel.

KB3114717 was released on February 9th, and ever since, users are constantly reporting various issues that the update caused. Most of the complaints are about crashes, and freezes. We have to remind you that this isn’t the first time Microsoft pulls a troublesome update.

KB3114717 Update for Office Reported Problems

As we mentioned above, users are reporting freezes while using Word 2013. One user on the Technet Office forum said:

“When KB3114717 is installed typing in a .docx Document becomes nearly impossible and CPU load goes to 100% (.doc has no issues). This happens with Word 2013 only, Word 2016 is not affected. Tested on Windows 8.1 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise 10240 and Windows 10 Enterprise 1511.”

Users encountered a similar issue in Excel 2013, as well:

“We had this issue with Excel 2013 32-bit. A use would be editing a workbook and all of a sudden it would lock up or take a second to switch between cells. Looking at Task Manager, Excel was taking up ~70% of the CPU whilst it was locking up. I was able to replicate the issue and then we traced the problem back to a Windows Update (KB3114717 to be specific). Once KB3114717 was removed, the issue stopped and I was no longer able to replicate the issue.”

Microsoft engineers reached to users, and they advised them not to install the update at all, or to uninstall it, if they already downloaded the patch. People from Microsoft also said that they’re working on the fix, but apparently, they decided to just pull the update.

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