[SOLVED] Microsoft Office randomly freezes

[Exploding PSU]

Often, when I'm typing in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), the keyboard stops registering my keypresses. The Office still runs (it's not "not responding"). It's just stops responding to anything. If I click 'close' the "Would you llike to save before quitting" dialog box appears, along with the "Save, Don't Save, Cancel" button. But then I can't click on anything. I can't even change selection using Tab key. Enter key doesn't work, Esc doesn't work either. At this point, I can start a new instance of Office and it will run fine until it locks up again. The only way to close Office when it already locks up is to open up task manager or just outright taskkill it. I've tried :

• Reinstalling Office (multiple times, with different options)
• Antivirus scan
• sfc /scannow
• Rollback Windows update
• Trying Office Safe Mode (the /safe thing)
• Changing my keyboards
• Uninstalling Office updates
• Changing language options (because why not)

Still happens. It doesn't happen on the online Google Docs though (not trying to start a brand war here, but it is what it is). This is getting stressful as when it does locks up the only way to get out of it would be to forcefully close it, which means I'd lose my changes very often. Any idea on what's happening?
Thanks..

QUICK EDIT : For some reason I ended up posting two of the same thread (double-posting). I really didn't mean to, must be something on my end.

QUICK EDIT 2 : I see the duplicate has been deleted. Thanks.

 

[Grobe]

First thing that comes to my mind is that there may be some other program that steal/lock focus. Maybe you have a software on your computer that tries to pop a window outside of screen resolution.
Next time this happens, try to Alt+Tab or Alt+Escape through open windows. See if there is something that shouldn't be there.

 

[Exploding PSU]

I got the chance to try that last night. Only MS Word was open and Alt-Tabbed. Nothing else appeared but Word. Same with Alt-Esc. Am I missing something?

 

[Grobe]

Am I missing something?

No, but that is a thing I was suspecting. Happens to me in the past you see.

How long since Windows was installed from scratch ?

 

[Exploding PSU]

No, but that is a thing I was suspecting. Happens to me in the past you see.

How long since Windows was installed from scratch ?

Since prehistoric times.
No, seriously. Haven't reinstalled since I built this PC, around 2017. So yeah, quite an old installation.

 

[Grobe]

Haven't reinstalled since I built this PC, around 2017. So yeah, quite an old installation.

I think it's time to format + reinstall W10 now.

Just be carefull to take backup of all files. Maybe you want to back up the system partition in case a new installation won't work properly (so you can go back to something that was working).

 

[Exploding PSU]

Pardon me for the extremely late reply, life's been hectic, but I found the culprit. And it's a surprising one.
TLDR : NZXT Cam

Long version : I was ready to reinstall the whole thing, I already backed up my important files (I do backup rather regularly, just to make sure). Already made a system restore, all the things. But I couldn't get myself to actually do the reinstall, as it was a rather busy days with work and stuff.
Anyway, I was writing this random document, and I found out that Office would freeze whenever I typed capital O. It was rather jarring as I was typing a report with large amount of the word 'Oil' and it would freeze every time I typed it. My first gut was this is some sort of shortcut. I checked the Radeon Software thing (can't remember the name on top of my head), it has plenty of shortcut including Shift+F12 to record games and what not, but not Shift+O. Next stop, NZXT Cam, and there it was, Shift+O was the shortcut to open the 'overlay'. I killed the NZXT Cam process and the problem went away.

What I can gather from this situation is NZXT Cam somehow runs with MS Office, and when I pressed Shift+O it tries to show an overlay but somehow it's invisible (or it fails to show up). This basically locks the keyboard and I can't click on anything but the close button because the overlay layer blocks my mouse clicks. Office isn't 'not responding', there's just a layer of NZXT Cam on top of it.
Cam doesn't run with Edge (hence why Google Docs works fine) or Notepad, only MS Office is affected. I honestly never use NZXT Cam, probably some sort of update enabled the automatic start-up to run again.

So yeah, your theory of a random program stealing focus is indeed correct. It's just not obvious. And boy I'm glad I don't need to reinstall Windows heh.
I've been hearing less-than-stellar things about NZXT Cam, but this is just next level. Anyway, thanks for your help. Really appreciated it.

 

[Grobe]

Thank you for sharing the solution