How to fix run-time error 53 every time I open a file in MS Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on Big Sur?

Question

Since I installed Big Sur, I have run into this problem every time I open a document using Word or a worksheet using Excel or a slide show in PowerPoint:

Run-time error '53':
 
File not found: Library/Application
Support/Adobe/MACPDFM/MacPDFM.framework/Versions/A/MacPDFM

This is very annoying, as I have to dismiss this window up to four times in a row every time I open a document on these Microsoft Office applications. I searched everywhere, including the official Microsoft website, macOS tip websites, but the information was incomplete, obsolete and did not offer a practical solution.

Does anyone know how to fix this really annoying problem?

Answer 1

After looking really hard for a solution, I finally found in a very obscure page the answer, which is quite simple and works with the latest Microsoft Word on Big Sur:

1. Close all Office applications
2. Go to /Users/your-user-name-here/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Startup/Word
   • If the Library folder is initially hidden, press the “Command” + “Shift” + “.” (period) keys at the same time to display it.
3. Remove linkCreation.dotm
4. Restart Word and problem solved

Unfortunately that does not solve the problem for PowerPoint or Excel because if I remove SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam inside the PowerPoint folder or the SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam inside the Excel folder will trigger another error on application launch.

To fix these errors, you need to:

1. Remove the SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam and SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam from the PowerPoint and Excel folders next to the Word folder.
2. Launch Excel and PowerPoint and go to the menu Tools -> Excel Add-ins... and Tools -> PowerPoint Add-ins..., respectively, and remove the Save as Adobe PDF add-in, by unckecking it and removing it with the "-" button and then click OK.
3. Restart Excel and PowerPoint and the problem should go away. If not, try several times to remove those options from the Tools menu until the problem goes away. I had to repeat this procedure in PowerPoint until this got fixed.

Answer 2

There's a much easier way:

1. Open Word
2. On the top of your Mac taskbar, click "Tools"
3. Click on "Templates and Add-ins..." at the bottom
4. Under Global Templates and Add-ins, selected the item "linkCreation.dotm"
5. Clicked the little (-) button to delete the item
6. Restarted MS Word and the problem should be resolved

Answer 3

Thank you, terminal command line in William Lai's answer worked! In case helpful for others, the only thing different for me was that 2 of the directories were appended with ".localized".

/Users/your-user-name/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content.**localized**/Startup.**localized**/Word

Answer 4

Adobe released a statement instructing users to run MS Office applications under Apple's Rosetta rather than in the new Apple Silicon M1/M2/M3 ARM framework. I believe this has potentially lower performance and not my preferred approach.

Additionally, I tried another approach that worked but only temporarily. I uninstalled Acrobat and Word/Excel/etc then reinstalled Acrobat first followed by the Office applications. For awhile I didn't get the error (presumably because there add-in never installed since Adobe didn't detect the Office apps. However, the errors eventually came back. I assume that when Acrobat automatically updates it looks for Office and installs the add-ins. It might work to turn off automatic updates for Acrobat but this is not ideal.

1. Uninstall Acrobat by running the uninstall file in the folder in the applications folder. Then delete the application support folder for Adobe: /Users/<your_username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/
2. Uninstall all applicable Office apps
3. Double check that the Add-ins (described in others' answers) are not in the application support folder for Word/Excel/PowerPoint. If present then delete these.
4. Reinstall Acrobat and then reinstall the Office apps

Answer 5

So far none of the above has worked for me. Worse, the dialog appears to come up on a hidden window, so I have to:

1. mouse to the Dock
2. locate Microsoft Word (small icon)
3. right click on the Microsoft Word
4. select Show all windows
5. navigate to the crude dialog (looks like something I saw in 1987)
6. click END
7. Repeat between 4 and 8 times for every document opened

Answer 6

Open Terminal and paste the following:

cd '~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Startup/' && rm Word/linkCreation.dotm && rm PowerPoint/SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam && rm Excel/SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam && open '/Applications/Microsoft PowerPoint.app' '/Applications/Microsoft Excel.app' 

Hit enter, then in the windows that open (Excel and PowerPoint) click on the menu bar entry 'Tools', and in the drop-down, respectively 'Excel Add-ins...' and 'PowerPoint add-ins...'. In each program, select the entry 'Save as Adobe PDF' and click on the - button. Click on OK.

Answer 7

Disable via Add-ins in Version 16+ by going to:

Tools → Excel Add-ins... → [uncheck / disable] Saveasadobepdf → OK