How to Uninstall MS Word on Mac

Asya Karapetyan
Content marketer, who specializes in Mac how-to guides
July 11, 2023
7 minutes to read

In our previous article, we explained how to uninstall Microsoft Office on Mac. But you may need to remove only Microsoft Word. So today, we’re going to provide a full guide of 2 ways to completely uninstall Microsoft Word on Mac with fully deletion of its service files.

Uninstalling Word on Mac

Contents:

  1. How to uninstall Word on Mac manually.
  2. How to uninstall Word on Mac with App Cleaner & Uninstaller.

How to uninstall Word on Mac manually

  1. The first thing you should always do before uninstalling any application is to quit the app.
  2. This can be done right from the Dock panel and the context menu, where you should select Quit app. But, if you have some issues and the app does not respond to the close command, then you need to call the Force Quit Applications window using the Command+Option+Esc key shortcut.

    • dock-panel-quit-word

    • force-quit-window-word
  3. After the first step, delete Word in the regular way you are used to. Just move the application into Trash by dragging and dropping it or by using the context menu.  
  4. remove word to trash

    Well, now we came close to the most important part of the program’s deletion. You might know that every application creates service files during its operations. And, even if you delete the executable file, the service files still remain on your disk until you remove them manually. MacOS doesn’t provide any default tool to find and remove the leftovers of apps.

    You have to search for them yourself or download special software tools for this task. We will tell about such tools in the second part of the article. Now let’s see where the service files are stored on your Mac.

  5. Open Finder and go to the Library folder. For this, use the Command+Shift+G key command. In the search field type ~/Library and press Enter.
  6. Finder window with the Go to folder search field

    Here you should find all the folders and files related to Microsoft Word and delete them. In our case, the Word service folder was located in the following directory:

    ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word

    finder window showing word containers files

    However, we would recommend that you also check the following directories for possible leftovers:

    • ~Library/Application Support
    • ~Library/Caches
    • ~Library/Preferences
    • ~Library/LaunchDaemons
    • ~Library/PrivilegedHelperTools

You should accurately remove Microsoft Word associated files, but be very careful not to touch any other file. Otherwise, the deleting of important files may damage the system.

After this, just don’t forget to empty Trash.

Well, the manual way of programs deletion could be too long, inconvenient and unsafe in case you delete files by mistake. So, most certainly, using a Microsoft Office removal tool would be more suitable for you. If you want to uninstall Word with a few clicks, keep reading this article.


How to uninstall Word on Mac with App Cleaner & Uninstaller

With App Cleaner & Uninstaller, you can avoid the long process of manually searching for service files. The application will scan your Home folder and, in several seconds, show you a list of all your applications as well as the list of service files for each application.

  1. First, launch App Cleaner & Uninstaller.
  2. Then select the Word program in the left section of the window.
  3. Click the Remove button and confirm the deletion.  

uninstalling the Word using App Cleaner Unionstaller

That’s all! It seems that this tool is the best MS Office uninstaller.

App Cleaner & Uninstaller is specially designed to uninstall apps from Mac completely and avoid useless service files cluttering your disk space. You can also use the app in case you just want to remove cache files, manage startup programs and disable unneeded system extensions. 



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