Yesterday, Microsoft released updates to its Office suite of apps on the iPhone and iPad, including Word and Excel. (Version 1.14.) Looking forward to some new features, I updated my apps. Unfortunately, after updating the apps, Word and Excel started crashing upon launch. Hopefully, some of you did not have this problem and were able to apply the updates successfully. I'm writing today with some tips for those of you who had the same problem that I had, but not just for that audience; these same tips should help you any time that you have a problem after updating any other app in iOS.
[UPDATE 10/14/15: Last night, Microsoft released Version 1.14.1 of its Office apps for iOS. It appears to me that this update fixes this specific problem, although Microsoft's release notes do not disclose what is different between 1.14 and 1.14.1. If you have not yet installed 1.14, you should be safe to install 1.14.1.]
The problem
The specific problem here occurred right after I updated the app and launched it for the first time. At first all seemed fine. I saw some introductory screens and scrolled through them. After those screens, I tapped a button to start using the app. From that point on, one of two things would happen. Most of the time, the app would just immediately crash after launching. Other times, right after launch the app would tell me "Updating..." but would just hang and do nothing at all.
I experienced the same problem with the Microsoft Excel app after it was updated. And the problem occurred on both my iPhone 6s and my iPad Air 2.
Solutions
Here are the steps that I try when something like this happens to me when updating an app.
First, of course, you can try to launch the app again. Always worth a try.
Second, force quit the app. You do this by double-pressing on the Home Button so that you can see your active apps, and then swipe up on the preview screen for the app in question. Then try to launch the app again. This often fixes problems for me, but it didn't work yesterday for Word or Excel.
Third, force quit the app again and restart your iPhone or iPad. Then launch the app right after your device has restarted. I've had this work in the past, but again, it didn't work yesterday.
Fourth, delete the app and reinstall it. To delete an app put your finger on the app icon for a few seconds until the icons start to jiggle. Then tap the X in the top left corner to delete the app. Then download the app again from the App Store. You won't be charged again for an app that you already paid for.
That fourth step is what Microsoft Support recommended that I try. And it did work to a certain extent when I tried it on my iPhone; the freshly downloaded version of the app launched with no problem, and I still had access to all files stored in cloud services such as Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive. The problem, however, was that I lost all of the Word documents that had been stored locally on my iPhone. That wasn't really a problem for me on my iPhone because I store very few documents in Word on my iPhone and none of them are the only copy of the file; I use the app on my iPhone mostly to read and revise Word documents attached to an email.
However, my iPad was a different story. I had some documents saved locally on my iPad that I didn't want to lose. All of them existed in some form in some other location, but it would be a pain to track them down again. Fortunately, there is a way to recover files in an iPhone or iPad app even if the app itself won't launch. Simply use a USB cable to attach your device to a computer with iTunes, then in the iTunes program on your computer tap on the icon for the device, then tap on Apps in the sidebar. The top part of iTunes will say "Apps" and contains a list of apps on the left and each of your iOS screens on the right. Scroll down below that to a section called File Sharing. You'll see another set of apps on the left, and if you click on an app, on the right you will see a list of documents locally saved in that app.
You can access those documents using drag-and-drop on your computer. So I created a folder on my desktop called Word Docs, then selected all of the Word documents listed in iTunes and dragged them to that folder. That created a copy of all of the documents in Word on my iPad and added them to that folder on my Mac. I then deleted the app on my iPad and reinstalled it. It worked great upon reinstall but contained no locally-saved apps. Then I connected to iTunes again, went to that same File Sharing section, and dragged all of the documents from that folder on my computer's desktop to the Word app on my iPad. It only took a second or two for the files to be copied over, and I could even see them showing up on the screen of Word on my iPad as I did so. I did the same thing for the Excel app, and I was back in business.
Fortunately, most apps that I use on my iPhone and iPad are very stable even when frequently updated. But every once in a while, there is a bug. Hopefully these tips will come in handy if you see something like this on your own device — whether it be this recent update to Word and Excel or some other app. And if you have your own tips to share for dealing with app problems after an update, I'd love it if you posted a comment to share with me and others.
