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Firefox crashes office 2013 on windows 7 when loaded and flash player is changed

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Operating a new Dell E6540 with Windows 7 Pro and office 2013 and have had zero issues for the last 6 months while running IE as browser. Went back to Firefox today and all Office apps crashed. Have reloaded and when I run IE all is fine. As soon as I reload Firefox all 2013 apps crash again. Really liked Firefox on my old machine but can't stand this so it looks like I am stuck with IE. Any help out there?

Backhoe

Operating a new Dell E6540 with Windows 7 Pro and office 2013 and have had zero issues for the last 6 months while running IE as browser. Went back to Firefox today and all Office apps crashed. Have reloaded and when I run IE all is fine. As soon as I reload Firefox all 2013 apps crash again. Really liked Firefox on my old machine but can't stand this so it looks like I am stuck with IE. Any help out there? Backhoe

All Replies (6)

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Firefox shouldn't and can't interfere with Office apps. Maybe try running Windows update ( you have to enable Microsoft update to install Office updates) and scanning for malware Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

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Thanks Tyler for the advice. Windows updates are and stay current. Norton 360 runs in background and I run Malwarebytes twice a week in safe mode. The only link to the 2013 Office crashing is Firefox and the associated recommended flash player change to 64 bit. (my system is x64) but apparently 2013 likes 32bit and that is seems to be the rub. As soon as I move from 32 bit flash to 64 bit flash to accommodate Firefox, 2013 crashes.

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I don't think Flash is the problem... On 64-bit Windows, Firefox doesn't use 64-bit Flash, it uses 32-bit Flash because it is a 32-bit program. It's confusing, to be sure, but the SysWow64 folder where Firefox fetches the Flash DLL is the 32-bit folder, and system32 has the 64-bit DLLs.

(The regular release of Firefox is a 32-bit program. There is a Nightly version of Firefox that is compiled as a 64-bit program, but that is for bleeding edge testing and not normal use. If you are using a third party product such as Pale Moon or Waterfox, you will need to contact their support to resolve issues with conflicts.)

Could you try this: make Internet Explorer your default browser. You can still use Firefox for normal browsing, but external applications will launch web pages in IE instead of Firefox.

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Maybe I misunderstood the Flash connection. Office most likely uses the ActiveX version of Flash that Adobe offers when you visit the site in Internet Explorer: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Firefox doesn't use that control, and instead uses a different file that is offered when you visit the site using Firefox.

So you can treat those two Flash player programs completely separately and not make changes to one to suit the other, since there is no need to do that.

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That solved the problem. ActiveX was the issue once I added other browsers and the plugin value appeared in the flash properties with ActiveX the crashing stopped as long as I allowed IE to remain as default browser. Still strange that as soon as I make Firefox default 2013 Office still crashes.

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There probably is a solution but I can't work it out myself: I'm sticking with Office 2010 as long as possible. :-)