fixed : Microsoft 365 error warning that JavaScript is turned OFF

Posted on 06-01-2025 by MacManus.nl

Question :
I am trying to use Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and OneDrive), and even though everything used to work fine up until recently… today it gave me an error message saying that it need JavaScript to enable me to use the options I am trying to use…

What is wrong and how do I fix this ?

Answer :
Microsoft 365 (previously named Office 365) relies on JavaScript for most (if not all) functionality that is web-based, so if you have (accidentally) switched JavaScript OFF, you will need to turn it back on before you can fully use Microsoft 365 again.

The problem probably is that you recently switched OFF JavaScript by accident… so the solution is probably simple : just switch JavaScript back ON.

To switch JavaScript back ON in your Safari browser, do this :
– open Safari.app
– click Safari in the top menu bar (top left, next to the Apple logo)
– in the pulldown menu, click on Settings
– in the window that opens, click on the Security icon/tab
– then at ‘Web content:’ make sure there is a checkmark for ‘Enable JavaScript’

To switch JavaScript back ON in Google Chrome browser, do this :
– open Chrome.app
– click the three-dot-button (top right)
– then click Settings
– click Privacy & Security
– then click Site Settings
– then click JavaScript
then choose one of three options :
– allow JavaScript for all sites, by choosing “Sites can use JavaScript” as the default behaviour
– allow JavaScript for most sites, by choosing “Sites can use JavaScript” as the default behaviour AND excluding specific websites
– allow JavaScript for very few sites, by choosing “Don’t allow sites to use JavaScripts” as the default bahaviour AND excluding specific websites

To switch JavaScript back ON in the Opera browser, do this :
– open Opera.app
– click Opera in the top menu bar (top left, next to the Apple logo)
– in the pulldown menu, click Settings
– on the Settings webpage that opens, clcik on ‘Privacy & security’ in the left menu bar
– in the list page that opens, click on ‘Site Settings’ (in the Privacy & Security chapter)
– in the Site Settings page that opens, click on ‘JavaScript’ (in the Content chapter)
– in the JavaScript page that opens, choose “Sites can use JavaScript”
– then, if adjustement to the general rule are needed, go to the “Customised behaviours”, where you can exclude or include specific websites to use JavaScript

To switch JavaScript back ON in the Microsoft Edge browser, do this :
– open Edge.app
– click Edge in the top menu bar (top left, next to the Apple Logo)
– in the pulldown menu, click Settings
– op the Settings webpage that opens, click on ‘Cookies and Site Permissions’ in the left menu bar
– in hte list page that opens, clcik on ‘JavaScript’ (in the All Permissions chapter)
– in the JavaScript that opens, set the slider to the right (so it will turn blue) and it will say “Allowed (recommended)”
– then, if adjustments to the genaral rule are needed, at “Block” add the sites you want to specifically prevent from using JavaScript and/or at “Allow” add the sites you want to allow specifically to use JavaScript

Note : in the Firefox and DuckDuckGo browsers, JavaScript is enabled by default and there is no user-friendly setting to switch it OFF (or ON).

That’s it !

enjoy 😉

fixed : MS Auto Updater warning saying I need to upgrade eventhough I am already on the latest version

Posted on 09-08-2024 by MacManus.nl

Question :
every time I restart my Mac, I get an error message from Microsoft saying that I can’t update, but I can’t find what’s wrong. When I click the link provided for more information, I get a page on the Microsoft website telling that support for MS Office 2019 for macOS has ended and that I should either updagrade to MS Office 365 or MS office 2021 for macOS… but as far as I know I am already running MS Office 2021 for macOS…

What is wrong ?

Answer :
Eventhough there is a very small chance that something completely different is going on, in the majority of cases, your problem will be that you are running the MS Office apps that you primarily use (e.g. Word, PowerPoint and Excel) in the 2021 version and some of the MS Office apps that you never use (e.g. Outlook, OneNote or OneDrive) are still on the 2019 version.

To solve this problem, do this :
– open the Finder
– go to [your Mac] > Library > Application Support > MAU2.0 > Microsoft Autoupdate
– doubleclick on Microsoft Autoupdate to run the MS Autoupdate.app
– click on the pulldown-button (top-right ; the downward-pointing triangular arrowhead)
– now the pulldown list of recent updates will fold out
– in the list, spot the apps that aregiving an error
– then click on the ‘Check for Updates’-button and wait for other updating errors to appear
– if the MS Office apps that you regularly use (e.g. Word, PowerPoint and/or Excel) are giving an update error saying you need to upgrade, your version of MS Office for macOS is outdated and you should buy the newest version or switch to an Office 365 (now called Microsoft 365) subscription
– if you only get updating errors for apps that you never use (e.g. Outlook), open a new Finder window
– then, goto [your Mac] > Applications
– then, type the name of the app you are looking for (e.g. Outlook) in the search field top right
– in the list of applications that appears, select the app you are looking for
– right-click on it’s name and choose Delete from the pulldown menu
– in the warning window that appears, typ your computer password (the password you use to startup & unlock your Mac) and click OK to allow the app to be deleted from you Mac

That’s it !

Enjoy 😉

fixed : Two-sided printing in MS Word for Mac

Posted on 14-06-2021 by MacManus.nl

Question :

I usually work in Apple’s Pages.app to do my text editing, but now someone sent me a school document that was made in MS Word. It opens just fine in Word for Mac, but when I want to print, I can’t find the “Two-sided printing” option…

How can I do Two-sided printing in Word for Mac ?

Answer :

As always, the solution is simple, you just have to know where to look and what to look for…

…anyway, here’s how-to do this in Word 16 (2021) :

Note : in older versions it is similar, but sometimes slightly different (just one of those things to know is that “Two-sided printing” is called “Duplex printing” on Windows and therefore also in older versions of MS Office for Mac…)

open the document in Word for Mac
press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Layout” from the pulldown menu
in the Layout settings view, see that “Two-Sided” is listed, with the option to choose “Long Edge Binding” (for portrait mode documents) and “Short Edge Binding” (for landscape mode documents)
> note that if “Two-Sided” is not listed here, your printer doesn’t have the option to print two-sided automatically, and you will have to do the two-sided printing manually [see below]

That’s it !

If your printer can’t do two-sided printing automatically, you can do this to get two-sided printing manually :

open the document in Word for Mac
press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” set both “From:” and “To:” to 1 and click the Print button
when your print is ready, draw a huge arrow on the back of the printed page pointing upward like the text on the front side
then put the page in the printer’s feeder drawer and make sure the arrow you have drawn on it is on the upside and pointing into the printer drawer and close the printer drawer
then click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” set both “From:” and “To:” to 1 and click the Print button
now look at the printed page that comes out and figure out how to put the pages in after having them printed on one side (make sure you have this correct before proceeding ; if you can’t get your head around this, just redo the above steps and print a new testpage)
now, get ready to print the entire document :
press the [CMD] + [P] key combo on your keyboard to open the Print window ( or goto Word > File > Print )
click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Even pages only”
then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” select “All”
then wait for all even pages to print
when done, flip over the bulk of printed paper the way you figured out to be right (using your test page as a reference) and put it back in the printing drawer
make sure that not only the orientation is correct, but that the first page is on top and the last page is at the bottom also
click on “Copies & Pages” and choose “Microsoft Word” from the pulldown menu
in the Microsoft Word settings view, set “Print:” to “Odd pages only”
then go back to “Copies & Pages” and at “Pages:” select “All”
then wait for all odd pages to print
…now check if your document is printed correctly on both sides !
if not… you have gotten your page flipping incorrect… too bad… you’ll have to redo from start…

That’s it !

enjoy 😉

fixed : where is the Show Thumbnails option in Microsoft Word for Mac ?

Posted on 23-03-2020 by MacManus.nl

Question :

I am loosing track of what I’m doing in the multi-page Word document that I’m working on. It’s over 20 pages and I am referring to info I have written on various previous pages, so I keep scrolling back and forth to find the exact pieces of text I have previously written…

It would be great to have a Show Thumbnails option like I have in Pages, Preview and Acrobat Reader, but I can’t find anything similar in Word.

Is it possible to have something similar in Word ?

Answer :

Yes, there is a Show Thumbnails option in Word ( Word 365 / Word 16 for Mac ). It’s just that Microsoft didn’t name it Show Thumbnails and put it somewhere deep inside the menu-structure where you won’t find it if you don’t know that Microsoft calls it Navigation Pane… here’s how to activate it :

open Word.app
don’t go to the top-of-screen Word application menu bar
go to the menu bar of the Word Document window
click on the View tab
then put a checkmark at “Navigation Pane”

…that’s it !

enjoy 😉

fix : send iOS Pages document as Word document from iPad

Posted on 10-03-2020 by MacManus.nl

Question :

I have MS Office running on my Mac, but it’s not Office 365, so on my iPad I can’t unlock all editing features of Word, PowerPoint and Excel for iOS …so I only have the option to open, view and read Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel sheets.

At this moment, I only have my iPad available and not my Mac. Is there any way to quickly do a little editing on a Word document on my iPad, even though I don’t have Office 365 ?

Answer :

There are several options to do so. You could use Google Docs or Office 700 (an OpenOffice version for iOS), but you probably have Apple Pages already installed on your iPad, so that is most likely the quickest solution :

open Pages.app on your iPad
under “Locations” find the Word document you want to edit
you will see that the Word document is opened as if it were a Pages document
now edit it as you wish
when finished, click on the button top-right (the button that looks like a circle with three dots in it)
in the menu that appears on the right, click on “Export”
in the pulldown menu that appears, click on “Word”
in the popup window, click on “Save to Files”
in the next window, select a location to save the Word document, then click “Save”

That’s it !

enjoy 😉

fixed : where are my Office 365 AutoRecovery files ?

Posted on 07-03-2017 by MacManus.nl

Question :

I accidentally messed up the Office documents (Word/PowerPoint/Excel) I was working on, and I didn’t save it before, so I wanted to get the auto-saved version from the AutoRecovery-folder as I’ve done in the old days of Office 2008 and 2004.

But now I am using Office 365, and I can’t find the AutoRecovery folder anywhere… where is it ?

Answer :

You might have guessed : nowadays, the AutoRecovery-folder is located in an entirely different location on your Mac.

If you are running Office 2011 for Mac (whether as part of Office 365 or not) the correct path to the AutoRecovery-folder is this :

~/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery

…and even though you might not immediately see the recovery files there, you will usually find them when when you search for hidden files in that folder [ see Note #2 below – Thank You to Kurt Pfirter for this addition ]

And if you are running Office 2016 for Mac (whether or not as part of Office 365) the correct path to the Word 15‘s AutoRecovery-folder(s) is :

~/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/

for PowerPoint 15 the correct path is :

~/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.PowerPoint/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/

and for Excel 15 the correct path is :

~/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/

BEWARE : it’s not straight-forward to get to this folder in recent/current versions of OSX and macOS, as the user’s Library-folder is a hidden folder. So if you want to access it, the easiest way to do so is :

– in the Finder, click on “Go” in the top menu bar

– when the pulldown menu appears, press the ALT-key on your keyboard (a.k.a. OPTION-key) and an extra option named “Library” will appear in the pulldown menu

– while holding the ALT-key, click on “Library” and your personal (hidden) Library-folder will open in the Finder

– there you can navigate further using the paths listed above to find the AutoRecovery-folder you’re looking for

That’s it.

Enjoy !

😉

NOTE # 1 :

It is advisory to also switch on the “file overwrite protection” (or “double backup”) option as it stores the previous version of the file you are working on. In Word, you turn this feature on from Word –> Preferences –> Save and then mark the “Always create a backup copy” check box. This way, whenever you click “Save”, a backup version is made of the previous/stored version before it overwrites the stored version of the file… so with it turned on, you at least have one prior version of your file.

NOTE #2 :

If you do not see the autosave file you were expecting to find in the AutoRecovery-folder, you might need a ‘show hidden files’-app to find it. Especially Excel-autosave-files tend to be hidden.

There are various ‘show hidden files’-apps :

The FREE one in the Mac App Store is Show Hidden Files: best finder but you could also use another FREE app like Hidden Files Toggle (by ZandorSmith.nl) or Funter (by Nektony.com) or HideSwitch (by CreativeCag.com)

Just beware! that you can mess up OSX or macOS entirely is you accidentally delete or alter files that are hidden in regular use !

…or you can use a key-combo to (un)hide files, as pointed out in this post :
https://macmanus.nl/2020/02/14/fixed-quick-way-to-make-hidden-files-visible-on-macos/

[ a big Thank You to thekurrgan for discovering this and posting this find here ]

NOTE #3 :

it turns out that there’s a bug in Excel 2011 for Mac : even though the Autosave does save a file with an .xlsx file extension, it’s not a true .xlsx file ! trying to open it will lead to an “Microsoft cannot open this file”-error. The solution is to change the file extension to either .xlsb (Excel binary format) or .xlb (older Excel backup format), to enable Excel to recognize the file and enable it to open.

[ a big Thank You to Paul Preston for noticing this problem and for Bryan P for posting the solution on Superuser.com and to Rich Michaels for posting his updated solution on answers.microsoft.com ]

fixed : where are my Office 2011 AutoRecovery files ?

Posted on 15-09-2014 by MacManus.nl

167

UPDATE : the updated version of this post for Office 2016 / Office 365 (Word 15 / PowerPoint 15 / Excel 15) can be found here :

fixed : where are my Office 365 AutoRecovery files ?

Question :

I forgot where to find the AutoRecovery-folder, so I used Office 2011’s build-in Help-option to get a hint. It told me I would be able to find the folder via this path :

~/Users/username/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 AutoRecovery

But when I open that folder I have a “Office 2004 AutoRecovery” and a “Office 2008 AutoRecovery”-folder, but there’s no such folder for Office 2011…

I checked in the Office 2011 Preferences to make sure Auto-saving is switched on, and it is… so where did the folder go ? where are my auto-save documents ?

Answer :

You might have guessed : there’s a fault in the Office 2011 Help file. Nowadays, the AutoRecovery-folder is located in an entirely different location on your Mac. The correct path is this :

~/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery

But there is yet another tiny hurdle to get to it : in the current version of OSX, the user’s Library-folder is a hidden folder. So if you want to access it, the easiest way to do so is :

– in the Finder, click on “Go” in the top menu bar

– when the pulldown menu appears, press the ALT-key on your keyboard (a.k.a. OPTION-key) and an extra option named “Library” will appear in the pulldown menu

– while holding the ALT-key, click on “Library” and your personal (hidden) Library-folder will open in the Finder

– there you can navigate to Application Support–>Microsoft–>Office to find the “Office 2011 AutoRecovery”-folder you are looking for

That’s it.

Enjoy !

😉

Note : It is not clear if this problem is due to OSX 10.9 “Mavericks” or that it is occurring with all installations of Office 2011 for Mac. Either way, the solution is as mentioned above.

UPDATE :

[ a big Thank You to Paul Preston for noticing this problem and for Bryan P for posting the solution on Superuser.com ]

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Tag Archives: Word

fixed : MS Auto Updater warning saying I need to upgrade eventhough I am already on the latest version

fixed : Two-sided printing in MS Word for Mac

fixed : where is the Show Thumbnails option in Microsoft Word for Mac ?

fix : send iOS Pages document as Word document from iPad

fixed : where are my Office 365 AutoRecovery files ?

fixed : where are my Office 2011 AutoRecovery files ?

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