Wondering if anyone else is seeing this issue. Word is randomly opening for a small set of users while they are in the middle of other tasks. We’ve disabled add-ins, run quick and full repairs of O365, checked task scheduler, turned off error reporting, uninstalled and reinstalled all O365 apps, renamed normal.dotm, confirmed nothing in startup is triggering it to open, and basically every other suggestion a basic web search brings up. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
We’ve been facing this as well. Not much seems to help, signing out and signing back in tends to temporarily fix it but it will come back shortly. See below - this is the only thread I’ve found online of anyone mentioning this.
Word keeps opening by itself after I close it : r/microsoft365
Edit: Out of curiosity, what industry are you in? This is reading like a pretty niche issue since there is almost nothing online about it.
This can happen when certain policies are in effect. For example, file type association policies or automated repair actions might cause Word to open unexpectedly. It’s worth checking if the affected users are all in the same OU or under a specific policy scope, which could explain why only a small group is impacted.
Yes, it happened to me a few times in the past couple of weeks. I thought I might have bumped my keyboard or something but one time I wasn’t even close. So I feel happy I’m not imagining anything now 
From that Reddit thread, looks like people recommended shutting down Copilot (and doing a repair)… you’ve already tried the repair, so maybe see if disabling Copilot works?
| Topic | Replies | Spice | Views | Activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Word | 11 | 16 | 244 | Feb 2022 |
| Word fails to open first time but will open if there is a word document open… | 2 | 1 | 70 | Feb 2014 |
| Word documents do not open | 11 | 9 | 93 | Aug 2013 |
| Opening word creates multiple instances even after closing the program | 10 | 22 | 819 | Dec 2024 |
| Odd word popup, but word isnt running | 16 | 5 | 77 | May 2013 |
