How to Fully Uninstall Microsoft Office on Mac in 2026 (Word, Excel, Teams and All Leftovers)

Dragging Microsoft Word or Excel to the Trash leaves behind gigabytes of support files that macOS never removes on its own. License files block reactivation, Microsoft AutoUpdate runs silently in the background, leftover fonts crowd your font menu, and dozens of com.microsoft.* preference files stay scattered across your Library. This guide gives you a complete, path-by-path walkthrough to fully uninstall Microsoft Office on Mac, whether you are switching away from Office entirely or cleaning house before a fresh reinstall or activation fix.

Why Dragging Office Apps to Trash Is Not Enough

macOS lets apps store data in multiple Library locations that exist entirely outside the application bundle. Microsoft Office takes full advantage of this. When you delete Microsoft Word.app, everything in the following locations stays put:

• Application support folders with gigabytes of cached templates and fonts
• Keychain entries that store your Microsoft account credentials
• License receipt files that macOS uses to verify your Microsoft 365 subscription
• The Microsoft AutoUpdate daemon, which continues running even after all Office apps are gone
• Dozens of com.microsoft.* preference files in ~/Library/Preferences

If you reinstall Office and it refuses to activate, or it shows the wrong account, stale files from a previous install are almost always the cause.

Step 1: Quit All Microsoft Processes

Before deleting anything, make sure no Microsoft process is running. Open Activity Monitor (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor), then search for "Microsoft" in the search box. Select each process and click the stop button. Pay special attention to Microsoft AutoUpdate and MicrosoftEdgeWebView, which often run without a visible window.

You can also do this in one Terminal command:

sudo pkill -f Microsoft

Enter your Mac password when prompted.

Step 2: Remove the Application Bundles

Open /Applications and move each of the following to the Trash:

• Microsoft Word.app
• Microsoft Excel.app
• Microsoft PowerPoint.app
• Microsoft Outlook.app
• Microsoft OneNote.app
• Microsoft Teams.app (may be in ~/Applications instead)
• OneDrive.app
• Microsoft AutoUpdate.app (usually in /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/)

Step 3: Delete Office Leftover Files from Your User Library

Press Command + Shift + G in Finder and go to ~/Library to reach your user Library folder. Work through each location below.

Application Support

~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft

This folder often exceeds 1 GB and contains font caches, telemetry data, legacy activation tokens, and support files for every Office app. Delete the entire Microsoft folder.

Caches

~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.Word
~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.Excel
~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.Powerpoint
~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.Outlook
~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.onenote.mac
~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.teams
~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.OneDrive-mac

Delete each of these folders. Combined they can run to several hundred megabytes.

Preferences

~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.onenote.mac.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.teams.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist

You can find all of them at once with this Terminal command, which lists every com.microsoft plist in your Preferences folder:

ls ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.*

Then remove them all in one go:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.*

Saved Application State

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Word.savedState
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Excel.savedState

These store window layout and open documents from your last session. Delete the relevant folders.

Step 4: Remove System-Level Microsoft Files

Some Office components install files into the system Library at /Library (not your user Library). You will need an administrator password to delete these.

Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU)

sudo rm -rf "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0"

This is the main location for the AutoUpdate service. Removing it stops the background daemon from running after a reboot.

Launch Agents and Daemons

AutoUpdate installs launch agents that tell macOS to restart it automatically. Remove them:

sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper.plist

Check ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ as well for any remaining com.microsoft.* entries.

Fonts

/Library/Fonts/

Office installs its own set of fonts into the system font library, including Arial, Calibri, Cambria, and others. If you want a fully clean slate, open Font Book, filter by "Microsoft" in the search field, and remove the ones you do not need. Be careful here: some of these fonts (Arial, for example) are also used by other applications.

Step 5: Delete License and Keychain Entries

Leftover license files are the most common reason a reinstalled copy of Office fails to activate cleanly.

License Files

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office

This Group Containers folder holds your Microsoft 365 license receipt, user identity tokens, and shared Office settings. Deleting it forces the reinstalled apps to request a fresh activation. This is the single most important folder to remove before a reinstall.

Also check:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.ms

Keychain Entries

Open Keychain Access (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access) and search for "Microsoft" and "Office". Remove any entries related to Microsoft accounts, Office licenses, or OneDrive. Stale Keychain entries can cause sign-in loops in a freshly installed Office.

Step 6: How to Remove Office 365 on Mac Completely with a Terminal Script

If you prefer to handle this in one pass, the following script chains together the most important deletions. Run each line in Terminal, entering your password when asked. Review what each line removes before you run it.

# Quit all Microsoft processes
sudo pkill -f Microsoft

# Remove app bundles
rm -rf /Applications/Microsoft\ Word.app
rm -rf /Applications/Microsoft\ Excel.app
rm -rf /Applications/Microsoft\ PowerPoint.app
rm -rf /Applications/Microsoft\ Outlook.app
rm -rf /Applications/Microsoft\ OneNote.app
rm -rf ~/Applications/Microsoft\ Teams.app
rm -rf /Applications/OneDrive.app

# Remove support, caches, preferences
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft
rm -rf ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office
rm -rf ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.ms
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.microsoft.*
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.*

# Remove AutoUpdate daemon
sudo rm -rf "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0"
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper.plist

After running the script, empty the Trash and restart your Mac. This ensures any file locks are released and launch agents do not start again from a cached state.

Verifying the Removal

After deleting everything manually, it is worth checking that nothing was missed. In Terminal, run:

find ~/Library -name "*microsoft*" -o -name "*com.microsoft*" 2>/dev/null

If the output is empty, your user Library is clean. Repeat with sudo find /Library to check system-level locations.

If you want a visual overview of everything Office left behind, Crumb can scan your full Library and map out app leftovers by name, showing you exactly which folders belong to Office components and how much space each one uses. It gives you a reviewable list before removing anything, which is useful when you are not sure whether a folder is safe to delete. Crumb runs entirely on-device and requires no account.

Before You Reinstall Office

Once the disk is clean, restart your Mac before running the Office installer again. This clears any cached process state and ensures the installer picks up a clean environment. When you open Word or Excel for the first time after reinstalling, sign in with your Microsoft account and the apps will activate fresh against your subscription.

If activation still fails after a clean removal, check that your Microsoft 365 subscription is active at account.microsoft.com/services and that you are signing in with the correct account.