How to fix Run-time error 53 every time I open a document in Word or a worksheet in Excel on Big Sur?

Question

Since I installed macOS Big Sur, I have run into this problem every time I opened a document using Word or a worksheet using Excel or a slide show in PowerPoint:

Run-time error '53':

File not found: Library/Application Support/Adobe/MACPDFM/MacPDFM.framework/Versions/A/MacPDFM

This is very annoying, as I have to dismiss this window up to four times in a row every time I open a document on these Microsoft Office applications. I searched everywhere, including the official Microsoft website, macOS tip websites, but the information was incomplete, obsolete and did not offer a practical solution.

Does anyone know how to fix this really annoying problem?

Answer 1

After looking really hard for a solution, I finally found in a very obscure page the answer, which is quite simple and works with the latest Microsoft Word on Big Sur:

1. Close all Office applications
2. Go to /Users/your-user-name-here/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Startup/Word
3. Remove linkCreation.dotm
4. Restart Word and problem solved

Unfortunately that does not solve the problem for PowerPoint or Excel because if I remove SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam inside the PowerPoint folder or the SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam inside the Excel folder will trigger another error on application launch.

To fix these errors, you need to:

1. Remove the SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam and SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam from the PowerPoint and Excel folders next to the Word folder.
2. Launch Excel and PowerPoint and go to the menu Tools -> Excel Add-ins... and Tools -> PowerPoint Add-ins..., respectively, and remove the Save as Adobe PDF add-in, by unckecking it and removing it with the "-" button and then click OK.
3. Restart Excel and PowerPoint and the problem should go away. If not, try several times to remove those options from the Tools menu until the problem goes away. I had to repeat this procedure in PowerPoint until this got fixed.

Answer 2

There's a much easier way:

1. Open Word
2. On the top of your Mac taskbar, click "Tools"
3. Click on "Templates and Add-ins..." at the bottom
4. Under Global Templates and Add-ins, selected the item "linkCreation.dotm"
5. Clicked the little (-) button to delete the item
6. Restarted MS Word and the problem should be resolved