[Fix] Office Web Apps (PWA) Automatically Installed in Windows 10 by Microsoft Edge Web Browser

If you noticed that suddenly Microsoft Office PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) were automatically installed in your Windows 10 operating system, you are not alone.

Many Windows 10 users are complaining about this bug or issue. They found that Office apps were automatically downloaded and installed in their computer system without their permission or knowledge. They didn’t install the apps manually. Some people started thinking that they might have some virus or malware infection in their device which caused this automatic installation of Office apps.

You’ll find shortcuts of Office apps in Start Menu’s programs list. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook apps are shown in All Programs list in Windows 10 Start Menu as shown in following screenshot: (thanks Windows Latest)

If you check installed programs list using classic Control Panel -> Programs and Features page or using Windows 10 Settings -> Apps -> Apps & Features page, you’ll find all Office PWAs showing in installed apps list as shown in following screenshot:

Surprisingly the apps publisher name is not Microsoft. The publisher name for all apps is displayed same as the app names which makes the apps looking more suspicious. Also the app icon shows very small which looks like a small dot for some people.

So how these Office apps got installed in your Windows 10 device without your permission? The culprit behind this annoying issue in Microsoft Edge web browser.

The new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser installed these Office apps automatically in many Windows 10 devices. If you check the shortcuts path of these Office PWAs, you’ll find that these apps are located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application folder. I also found 2 interesting executables msedge_proxy.exe and pwahelper.exe in the same directory. It seems the PWAs are called and executed by msedge_proxy.exe executable file.

The installation was done from server-side using some kind of A/B testing, that’s why some people are getting these Office apps installed automatically and some are not.

In fact many Windows 10 users who already had Microsoft Office suite installed in their devices, also received these Office web apps. So it seems Microsoft Edge is unable to detect existing Office apps installed in a device.

These Office PWAs are web-based app versions that look and behave like native Windows apps but open and work inside a browser window.

Now the question comes how to get rid of these automatically installed Office apps from your Windows 10 device? How to disable or remove these Office PWAs from Windows 10?

Actually uninstalling and removing these apps is very easy and you can get rid of these forcefully installed apps using following simple steps:

1. Open Microsoft Edge browser and click on the 3-dots menu button present at the right-side of the toolbar. Now select Apps -> Manage Apps option from the main menu.

Alternatively, you can press ALT+F keys together to show Edge Menu and then press A and M keys to open Manage Apps page.

You can also directly open Edge Apps page using edge://apps/ URL in address bar.

2. On Manage Apps page, you’ll find all Office apps listed.

To remove the apps, you just need to click on the Cross (X) icon present next to the app name.

That’s it. It’ll immediately uninstall and remove all automatically and forcefully installed Office web apps from your computer system.

PS: You can also uninstall and remove these apps using “Control Panel -> Programs and Features” page or using Windows 10 “Settings -> Apps -> Apps & Features” page.

Also Check:

[Fix] How to Uninstall New Microsoft Edge in Windows 10? Uninstall Button Grayed Out or Disabled