Since updating my MBP M1 to Sequoia and updating Microsoft Office 365 the same day, I have been having issues trying to open Word and Excel files. It seems as they lost the association with MS Office and now default to other applications that can open Word or Excel files. When I tell Finder to open a file with MS Word I get the following error message: “Apple could not verify “xxxxxxxxx.docx” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy”. Other file types work perfectly well as before. It seems permissions related. Everything works ok in the iOS 18 Word on iPad. I have seen this reported on the Apple Community Forums but still no answers on how to fix the issue. I would appreciate suggestions and if anybody else have seen the same issue. Thank you !
I have MS 365 and Sequoia and do not see this issue on a M2 Air and an M1 Max Studio. I am sure you tried the reboot trick. You can also reinstall MS 365 apps and Sequoia without loss of data.
Update and solution in case someone has the same issue: I tried uninstalling, rebooting, etc… and it did not work. So based on a proposed solution found in the Apple Communities this is what worked for me:
Go to the file with .docx extension and “right click” to select “Get Info”. From the “Get Info” screen, go to where it says “Open With:”, make sure you select “Microsoft Word” and then select “Change All…”. This will associate all ".docx" files back to “Microsoft Word”, and no more issues when clicking from the Finder window. Similarly, do the same for *.xlsx extensions and Microsoft Excel.