Dubious Quality

I was in the middle of a sentence, tap-tap-tapping along, when Word closed suddenly. No warning, just poof. 

Odd.

I tried to re-open Word by double-clicking on my document file. I received the "this file is not associated with any program" message.

Upon further investigation, I found that Microsoft Word had deleted itself from my computer. Spontaneous combustion. It wasn't just a brushfire, though. It was a raging inferno, because the rest of Microsoft Office had deleted itself, too. Spontaneously.

It's the strangest damn thing that ever happened to me while using a computer.

It's impossible, right? That an entire suite of programs would just disappear from computer? Not so, my friend. Every trace of Microsoft Office was gone from my drive. 

I started researching. Incredibly, this has happened to more than a few other people. One possible culprit was Windows Defender (or whatever they call the Microsoft-included anti-virus now). Not surprising, really, but the combination of circumstances didn't match my situation. However, since I don't like Defender anyway, I turned it off and installed Bit Defender instead.

Second possible cause: in a case where Windows is installing updates for both Windows and MS Office at the same time, Office applications "can be lost." Never mind that it's pure idiocy for Microsoft to be doing that simultaneously. I checked the Windows log and updates had ben installing, though I couldn't tell if Office was included. 

No matter. I reinstalled Office and immediately turned off auto-updates.

Now it's working again. For now. Allegedly.