Couldn’t start Office installation

You might have another installation running in the background, and conflicting with the new installation you are initiating. This might prompt for the “Couldn’t start Office installation. Another installation is in progress” error during office installation.

To fix this error, you need to stop the other installation processes using Task Manager.

• Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to start Task Manager.
• Locate the Office installation process running in the background
  • Office installation processes are usually IntergratedOffice.exe and Microsoft Click-to-Run.
• Right-click on the process and click on End Task from the menu

Now try to initiate the office installation and it should work like charm.

The most common scenario is that the other office background processes are conflicting with the Office installation process and causing the Error “Couldn’t start Office installation”. Try restarting your device and reinstalling Office once the device is up and running.

Office installation can also be interrupted if third-party services are conflicting with the office program which can result in Error “Couldn’t start Office installation”.
Consider performing Clean Boot to disable all startup programs and services on the computer. Also, consider disabling unwanted software’s which can conflict with the office suite. Try installing the office after starting the computer with minimal set of services, drivers, and startup programs to avoid other programs interfering with office installation.

Perform Clean Boot in Windows10, 8.1 and 8

• Press Windows Key + R to open Run command, type msconfig.msc and click Ok. Or Open Control Panel –>Administrative Tools–>System Configuration

• On the Services tab of the System Configuration dialog box, tap or click to select the Hide all Microsoft services check box, and then tap or click Disable all.
• On the Startup tab of the System Configuration dialog box, tap or click Open Task Manager
• On the Startup tab in Task Manager, for each startup item, select the item and then click Disable
• Close Task Manager.
  On the Startup tab of the System Configuration dialog box, tap or click OK, and then restart the computer.

Consider installing office after restarting the device.

Perform Clean Boot in Windows 7

• Press Windows Key + R to open Run command, type msconfig.msc and click Ok. Or Open Control Panel –>Administrative Tools–>System Configuration
• On the General tab, click the Selective startup option, and then click to clear the Load startup items check box
• On the Services tab, click to select the Hide all Microsoft services check box, and then click Disable all.
• Close Task Manager.
  On the Startup tab of the System Configuration dialog box, tap or click OK, and then restart the computer.

Consider installing office after restarting the device.

The Office offline installer may help in bypassing the potential firewall, proxy, antivirus, or Internet connection issues that might occur during an Office installation as we will be downloading the Offline installer ISO file to install office to avoid error “Couldn’t start Office installation”.

Steps to Download Office Offline Installer File

Please visit www.office.com/myaccount to download the office offline installer. We need to make sure that we are using the same account which is associated with our copy of office.

If we are not signed in with the Microsoft account associated with our copy of Office, we need to sign in now. If we are signed in with a different account, we need to sign out from that account and sign in again with the correct Microsoft account.

Once we logged in, we will find My Office Account Homepage with your subscription account information and the place we normally go to download the standard online Office installer.

• From the My Office Account Home page, click the Install button.

• From the Install page, click “Language, 32/64-bit, and other install options.”

• Language and Install Options: This is the section from where we can manually select to download Office in Language other than Operating System Configured language. We can also opt for the 64-bit version of office instead of normal 32 bit.
  • Offline Installer: From the Office Installer section, select desired language and click on Download offline installer.

Office installation can also be interrupted due to erroneous residual files during the installation or un-installation of previous versions of Microsoft office which can cause error “Couldn’t start Office installation”.
Consider removing Microsoft Office versions installed in the device and try to reinstall the Office program. You can reinstall the other office versions once the office installation is finished.

Uninstall Office from the Control Panel

• Press Windows Key + R to open Run command, type appwiz.cpl and click Ok. Or Open Control Panel –>Programs
• Right-click on the Microsoft Office product, and choose Uninstall.
• Follow the instructions on the screen.

Uninstall Office using Microsoft Easy Fix Tool

Try running Microsoft Easy Fix tool to completely remove Office from the device.

Reference: Microsoft Article for uninstalling Office

Consider installing office after restarting the device.

We’ve compiled all the resolutions and workarounds verified by the experts to fix the mentioned error. These resolutions and workarounds helped the users to fix the error on their system. Try implementing these resolutions on your computer and if the preceding suggestions fail to solve the error, please feel free to Ask an Expert.