Microsoft patches Office for Mac 2011, fixes OS X El Capitan Outlook hang

By John Callaham
last updated

If you've either been waiting to update to OS X El Capitan because of issues with Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, or you've simply been suffering through them, good news—Microsoft has just pushed out a compatibility fix.

The Office for Mac 2011 patch brings the version number up to 14.5.6. The description says:

The hang situation that occurs during an account sync operation in Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 is fixed.

Microsoft has yet to issue a similar patch for Office 2016, which has been causing issues for customers as well. Hopefully that will follow soon.

John Callaham
John Callaham

I have been writing professionally about technology and gaming news for 14 years.

7 Comments
  • Now if they'd just fix Office 2016 so it doesn't take over a minute for the app to open. Although it is a good excuse to go get a cup of coffee. However, by the tenth cup of coffee that morning, other problems develop.
  • PLEASE MICROSOFT: send us a patch for Office 2016 now!
  • why is my outlook.com mail crashing when I click on the stamp on the bottom? I don't have Office on the iMac yet it constantly says my mail quit unexpectedly
  • Did the the Microsoft update then updated OSX. Outlook keeps locking up every 5 minutes or any time I try and make a change.... so it may not be fixed after all.
  • Won't let me edit my previous post, after I updated OSX it offered me the Office update again. After installing it the second time it seems to work.
  • So much for Office 365 getting faster updates
  • After updating to El Capitan, I began a new "game" of watching the spinning beachball every time I did anything with WORD or Excel. Just installed the Office 2011 patch from Microsoft and -- guess what? -- nothing has changed! A couple of months ago, when I finally left the world of WIndows=blue-screen-of-death for life in the Appleverse that my desktop would be trouble-free, but evidently I was naive.