Microsoft Office, the wildly popular productivity suite, is currently being plagued with an annoying bug that could make your life a little frustrating if you are sitting in front of a screen for the most part of a day. Office users running a recent update have encountered that the software suite is broken and a background command prompt window is opening and closing on the regular.
The repeated process that’s being followed by the command window is definitely annoying and makes you cringe a little every time it appears on the screen. The same window has been popping up on my Windows 10 system for quite a few days but I never paid much heed to the same as Insider builds tend to have a few quirks. But, we only got to know about the problem when Microsoft accepted that there was genuinely something wrong with Office and a fix was in the works.
There’s a fix making it’s way through the #OfficeInsiders Slow ring – details attached https://t.co/YplFcR3Pw0
— Jen Gentleman ? (@JenMsft) May 30, 2017
This Office bug was first spotted back in the middle of April and holds a background task responsible for the opening of a random command prompt window every hour or so. You could simply find the process for Office 2016 build 16.0.8201.2025 running in the Task Manager on their system. But, no need to tinker with the same as Microsoft is already testing a fix with Office Insiders who’re on the Slow Ring. You can either switch to the said updated version of the software, available in preview.
If you’re not willing to sacrifice your relation with the cutting-edge software updates, then you will need to take the following steps to stop the command prompt window from flashing on your screen every hour. The steps to get the annoying CMD pop-up off the screen are as follows:
- First you’ll need to open the Task Scheduler app as an administrator. Just simply search for the same using Cortana and right-click the app and select ‘Run as administrator’ option
- On the left, expand the Task Schedule Library option, followed by Microsoft and then select Office.
- On tapping the Office option, you’ll notice certain options pop up on the right. Right-click on ‘OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration’ and do the necessary — hit ‘disable’
These steps are all you need to follow to get rid of the insistent command window pop-ups which may be disrupting your workflow. Microsoft is now expected to release an update patch to fix all versions of Office for all users soon enough, not just to those in the Insider rings. You can either wait a while for an update patch to roll out globally or disable the feature or just join Office’s Insider program and make the switch to the Slow ring.
