Microsoft Office November 2020 Updates Fix Outlook, Skype Issues

Microsoft has released the November 2020 non-security Microsoft Office updates with performance enhancements and fixes for known issues impacting Windows Installer (MSI) editions of Office 2016 products.

The KB4486756 update fixes an issue that causes Outlook and Word to fail when attempting to generate hyperlinks for long URLs.

KB4486745 addresses another issue affecting 32-bit versions of Microsoft Skype for Business 2016 and causing video participants to not appear in conference calls.

Although these are issued as non-security updates, this month Microsoft has also included security enhancements that implement a more secure version of the signature scheme used by Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) projects.

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November 2020 Office non-security update list

Four of the Office November 2020 non-security updates apply to the entire Microsoft Office 2016 software suite, while five others address issues impacting standalone Office products like Word, Project, and Visio.

The November 2020 updates released can be manually installed from the Download Center or automatically by using the Microsoft Update service.

These updates apply to Microsoft Installer (.msi)-based Office products only and do not apply to Office subscription or Office 2016 Click-to-Run editions such as Microsoft Office 365 Home.

The list of updates and the Office products they apply to is available below.

Office Product	Knowledge Base article
Skype for Business 2016	KB4486745
Microsoft Office 2016	KB4486746
Microsoft Office 2016	KB4486747
Microsoft Office 2016	KB4486668
Microsoft Project 2016	KB4486749
Microsoft Publisher 2016	KB4484334
Microsoft Office 2016	KB4486716
Microsoft Visio 2016	KB4486709
Microsoft Word 2016	KB4486756

Some Office updates may require system reboots

It is important to mention that you may also be requested to restart your computer after applying some of this month’s Microsoft Office updates.

If you start experiencing issues after updating your Office installation, you can uninstall the problematic update by following these steps:

1. Go to Start, enter View Installed Updates in the Search Windows box, and then press Enter.
2. In the list of updates, locate and select the offending update, and then select Uninstall.

Depending on the Office update you are using, you may also have to apply other updates for some of the fixed issues to be completely addressed on your device (for instance, KB4486745 requires installing the KB3203472 or the KB4011099 Office 2016 updates).

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