Windows: Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Internet Explorer Close unexpectedly

Problem: Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Internet Explorer close unexpectedly on a regular basis in Vista. Crash report lists gdiplus.dll_unloaded as the module.

Solution:

1. gdiplus.dll_unloaded is in conflict with Apple iCloud, uninstall the iCloud program and reboot the machine, this will correct the regular crashes.

2. If you want to maintain iCloud, open Windows Control Panel, find the iCloud control panel icon, open the control panel and allow iCloud to deploy fully to all of the programs on the affected computer. This will result in new icons appearing in Word and Excel.

3. If neither of the above solutions work, or if gdiplus.dll is not listed, try scanning the machine for malware.

8 thoughts on “Windows: Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Internet Explorer Close unexpectedly

  1. I just want to let you know that your solution of removing iCloud in order to fix the unexpected crashes of MS Word and Excel (and likely other Microsoft Office programs) worked beautifully, so far anyway. I have been searching for a solution for the past two days and after repeated fixes which didn’t solve the problem, I stumbled across your blog entry. I didn’t really realize I had installed the iCloud program since I don’t have a need for most of Apple’s products, but had noticed it without much thought when I was reviewing the programs on my laptop. When I read your blog entry here, that jarred my memory. I have uninstalled iCloud, and as I said initially, so far both Word 2007 and Excel 2007 seem to be back working as they are supposed to without encountering problems and shutting down. Thank you for your post.

  2. Christy – Thanks for the feedback and I’m glad it seems to have solved your problem. This has been a frustrating error for a lot of people because it occurs randomly within office programs. iCloud comes as a selected download with Quicktime and iTunes, so I suspect many people installed it without realizing.

  3. Does this mean that I cannot use icloud on my Win Vista Dell? I have an Ipad which i would like to use with the cloud and still use Office. I have removed the Icloud for now but would like a solution.

    • John,

      You can still use iCloud on your Win Vista Dell, the way to do this is to reinstall the latest version of iCloud. Once installed, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel.

      In the control panel or in your program files you will see an icon for iCloud Control Panel, open the panel and complete the deployment of icloud. You can find the steps here: http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/pc.html

      The issue is a result of iCloud not fully deploying on its initial install, the extra step with the control panel to complete the deployment should fix the issues with Microsoft Office Crashing.

      Thanks for Posting!

  4. I came across your blog while searching for a solution to this same problem. I have now uninstalled Icloud and this seems to solve the problem with Word crashing. Thanks very much for the solution, as far as it goes. (I have a Dell XPS laptop with Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.)

    Your solution of fully deploying Icloud, above, did not work for me. I opened the control panel and logged in with my apple ID as soon as I installed Icloud, but it still caused the problem with Word. Do you have any suggestions?

    • Matt,

      Try deploying icloud without the photostream add-on. What is happening is the photostream add-on wants to add itself to the ribbon’s in word, for some reason its not installing properly and causing a conflict with the gdiplus module.

      It should work without that component.

  5. Thanks!

    This issue is not only in Microsoft Office. Progress OpenEdge Client (prowin32.exe) and SimCoupe emulator (simcoupe.exe) would crash when moving their window after having opened the open file dialog. Multi-Edit (mew32.exe) resisted the crash, but barely, the first move of the window snapped back to the starting point.

    After uninstalling iCloud all apps are behaving again – thank you!

    Vista x64

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