We have all been there. You're working on a document or spreadsheet, or you're using email and BAM! One of your Microsoft Office applications starts behaving strangely or stops responding. Please relax and don't panic or get angry. This sort of thing happens from time to time and is often quite easy to fix. In this story, I'll walk you through a series of progressively aggressive (and more time-consuming) fixes for Office apps on Windows, assuming whatever the previous step didn't work. Spoiler alert! The worst case scenario requires running a cleanup tool on your current Office installation, followed by a clean installation of a fresh copy of Office. It has never failed in my experience, every time I have had to go that far. However, let's go back to step 1 to start this process where it normally ends.