How To Uninstall Office 2016 For Mac

If you’ve simply had enough of Office 2016 crashing on your Mac or just want to completely remove it, here’s how to fully uninstall Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac. Office 2016 is a huge package taking up more than 6GB of disk space (compared to 2.5GB in Office 2011 for Mac) with hundreds of files, libraries and components. It’s important therefore when uninstalling it that you make sure you uninstall all components, not just the main applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Unfortunately, Microsoft don’t make this as easy as it should be so here we show you the easiest and quickest way of uninstalling Office 2016 on Mac to make sure that nothing is left behind. Note that if you use Time Machine, there’s no need to uninstall Office 2016 if you just want want to uninstall an Office for Mac update.

Uninstall Office 2016 For Mac The Easy Way

The easiest way to completely uninstall Office 2016 for Mac and ensure that no files or folders are left behind is with an uninstaller app. Using an uninstaller is more effective than just dragging and dropping programs to the Trash because they detect all associated files and folders that could be left behind.

1. Download and install AppCleaner. AppCleaner is a free tool which properly uninstalls applications in your Mac. It searches for all files and folders associated with Microsoft Office and then deletes them all during installation. Simply select or search for Microsoft Office 2016 applications, make sure all the folders and files you want to remove are selected and click Remove. Here’s an example uninstalling Microsoft Remote Desktop:

You will be simply asked for your admin password to complete the uninstall which will be done instantly when you click Remove. Note that there are also other uninstallers such as AppZapper that do the same job as AppCleaner but AppZapper costs $12.99 whereas AppCleaner is free.

Remove Office 2016 For Mac The Hard Way

Using AppCleaner is the quickest and easiest way to ensure that Office 2016 for Mac is removed from your Mac. However, you can also remove Office for Mac 2016 manually if you want to but we don’t recommend it because it’s considerably more complicated and only does exactly the same thing as AppCleaner.

Here’s how to remove Office 2016 for Mac manually.

Go to your Applications folder in Finder. Hold down the CMD key next to the space bar and select all Office 2016 for Mac programs that are installed i.e. Microsoft Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. Then Ctrl-click or right-click and select Move to Trash:

However, this is only part of it. You must then manually remove all of the separate components and folders that are not removed using this method. Microsoft has posted full instructions on how to do this here but it’s a messy, time-consuming process that yields no better results than using AppCleaner.

If you have any questions, problems or issues on removing Office 2016 from your Mac, let us know in the comments below. You may also find our guide to fixing Office 2016 crashes on Mac useful too. If you just want to roll back and Office for Mac update, check out our guide about how to uninstall Office for Mac updates.