Every morning upon arriving to work, I sit down with a cup of coffee and check my emails. It’s a ritual of mine.

Today, however, that ritual took a bit of a detour. When I tried to launch Outlook, I was greeted with a message from Microsoft Office that said it was updating. Nice! Perhaps they fixed some bugs in the program.

Or… perhaps they introduced a new one? After the Updating Office window disappeared, I was greeted with an interesting message.

The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142). Click OK to close the application.

I clicked OK and tried to launch Outlook again. Same Updating Office message window, followed by the same error code. So, I tried the next thing any computer guru would do: I rebooted. TWICE. Same issue. Error 0xc0000142 haunted my computer no matter what I tried.

The Solution

A little bit of Googling led me down the path to resolving the issue:

1. Click the Windows Start button or press the Windows key on your keyboard.
2. Type in “Control Panel”. Press enter.
3. Click on “Programs”.
4. Click on “Programs and Features”
5. After all of the programs load, scroll down until you find Microsoft Office.
6. Right-click on the Microsoft Office program. I have two versions installed “Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016 – en-us” and “Microsoft Office 365 Business – en-us”. Pick the one that is causing you issues.
7. Click “Change”.

8. Try the Quick Repair first.
9. If the Quick Repair did not work, the Online Repair will.
10. Reboot your computer.

As always, if you have any questions or need more assistance, feel free to contact me.

Sources

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRdKf69xpmUovRzvZFxRPFxZXTvEUCI2l-n1uH7V8aLJ1Xlfxev&s

https://www.tenforums.com/microsoft-office-365/140304-office-365-programs-application-unable-start-correctly-0xc0000142.html

https://raywoodcockslatest.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/msofc2-unable-to-start-correctly.png