How to uninstall Microsoft AutoUpdate on macOS?

Question

I deleted the Office suite from my MacBook, but I receive notifications from Microsoft AutoUpdate that there are software updates. How can it be if I deleted Office? How to uninstall Microsoft AutoUpdate?

Solution 1

While Microsoft's guide for uninstalling Office says to remove files from your user Library, Microsoft AutoUpdate is actually located in the system Library, in /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0. The simplest way to uninstall the app if it's open is to secondary click the icon in the dock, select Options > Show in Finder, Go > Enclosing Folder and delete the MAU2.0 folder.

Solution 2

On macOS Mojave 10.14.1, this is what I found:

Microsoft Auto Update had 19 files on macOS in multiple directories, after I'd already removed it from ~/Library/Containers. You should remove those folders to completely remove the application and all it's traces. Some of the directories have spaces in their names, make sure to type those spaces with a leading backslash, if you use rm -Rf to remove those!

In your System Library:

/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft AutoUpdate.app

In your User-Library:

~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate.fba.plist
~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft AU Daemon
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.savedState

You will also find temporary files, I had them in four different locations, but your mac will clean those up eventually. I found some in the system- and user-caches, as well as in /private/var/folders, if you really want all traces gone, you'll have to track those down as well.

Solution 3

Follow the Manual Steps here

Make sure to check:

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

There might be other directories but you get the point, the guide explains it fairly well.

Hope this helps!

Solution 4

Check under /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools, all kinds of skeletons lurk there from applications that had been installed at some point. I found the following executables in this folder related to MS-Office:

com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper

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Comments

[Aker]

I used Office 2016

[Tetsujin]

Then by the same magical powers of Google, let me preset support.office.com/en-us/article/…

[Andi]

@Tetsujin does not include removal of the AutoUpdater :/

[user2481095]

Didn't work for me.

[HappyCactus]

AppCleaner (version 3.5) Can't see Ms AutoUpdate. It simply doesn't list it.

[bertieb]

Welcome to Super User. Could you perhaps edit your answer and explain how OP should do that, if they removed the Office suite as they indicated?

[Marquizzo]

Wow, are all app developers this intrusive, or is it just Microsoft that leaves unwanted residues all over the operating system?

[jhfrontz]

There is also /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.microsoft.autoupdate.help‌​er

[yts61]

did you delete all 3 of them?

[ankush981]

@Marquizzo In my experience, this is the norm on a Mac. It's like there are ten different places where you could hide your executables, and every app maker takes full advantage of it.