How to completely uninstall Microsoft 365 (Office) on Mac
Dragging Microsoft Office to the Trash removes the app itself, but its support files, caches and settings stay on your Mac. Here is where they are and how to remove all of them.
Microsoft 365 is several apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote), each with its own sandbox container, plus shared group containers for licensing and settings. Microsoft does not ship an uninstaller for the Mac. Its support article "Uninstall Office for Mac" lists the manual steps this page follows. Microsoft AutoUpdate is a separate component that other Microsoft apps also use.
Back up Outlook data first. Outlook keeps its mail profile in ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office, and Microsoft warns that removing the Office group containers deletes it. Export anything stored only on this Mac (File > Export in Outlook) and check that documents are saved outside the app containers or in OneDrive. If you only need to change licences, Microsoft's License Removal Tool does that without uninstalling.
com.microsoft.WordRemove Microsoft Office by hand
- Quit Microsoft Office. If it has a menu bar icon or runs in the background, quit that too.
- Open the Applications folder and drag Microsoft Office to the Trash.
- In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (Shift-Command-G), paste each location below, and move what you find to the Trash. Not every location exists for every version.
- Empty the Trash, then restart your Mac so nothing from Microsoft Office is left running.
Where Microsoft Office keeps its files
/Applications/Microsoft Word.app~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.Word~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Word.savedState~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.microsoft.Word~/Library/WebKit/com.microsoft.Word
Other places Microsoft Office uses
~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.WordContainer~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.ExcelContainer~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.PowerpointContainer~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.OutlookContainer~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.macContainer~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.errorreportingContainer~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Office365ServiceV2Container~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.netlib.shipassertprocessContainer~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.msContainer~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHostContainer
The quick way
Diskzy finds Microsoft Office and the files listed here, shows the size of each one, and moves them to the Trash together. Files that another app also uses are left alone.
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