If you’re an Uber user, you’ll probably wait until next week to open emailed receipts from the sharing service. Why? Because they will cause Outlook to crash. Microsoft Word too.
Bleeping Computer highlights a support document from Microsoft that describes the issue. Uber uses what Microsoft calls “complex tables” as part of their receipt email, and these complex tables are currently causing Outlook and Word to crash. This affects not only the Current Channel of Outlook (that is, the version you are most likely using), but preview builds in the Current Channel and even the Beta Channel.
Word (and Outlook) will release a fix, but that fix will only go live when Microsoft rolls out its updates next Tuesday, August 9th. Until then, you’re better off just avoiding Uber emails altogether.
If you just can’t do it, Microsoft recommends the following steps. First, open a command prompt with administrator privileges. Second, enter the following two commands, pressing the Enter key after each:
cd %programfiles%Common FilesMicrosoft SharedClickToRun officec2rclient.exe/update user updatetoversion=16.0.15225.20288
Of course, you can open a receipt from Uber or any other email service provider on a different client. (Presumably, you can also redirect the email to another account, such as the Gmail web client, to open it there.) Microsoft hasn’t found any of these types of issues with the Android and iOS Outlook app either. However, if all this doesn’t work for you, will you just have to wait until next week or stop using Uber altogether?