Recent 2025 Office 365 Updates Causing Dynamics GP Word Template Error

If you’re seeing a Dynamics GP Word Template error after a recent Microsoft 365 or Office 365 update, you’re not alone. This past week, we began seeing several clients experience an error within Dynamics GP when trying to run reports based on a Word Template. Here’s the text and a screenshot of the error:

WINWORD.EXE – Entry Point Not Found
The procedure entry point SetThreadDescription could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\Office16\wwlib.dll

What’s Causing the Dynamics GP Word Template Error

Our team has seen Office updates break Word Template functionality in Dynamics GP before, so we immediately attempted to roll back to an earlier version of Office known to work. We landed upon this post that outlined the steps needed to roll back Office to the October 1, 2025 build:

The procedure entry point SetThreadDescription could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\Office16\wwlib.dll – Microsoft Q&A

The exact steps followed:

1. cd %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun\
2. OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.19231.20156

Users were then able to print Word Templates from GP without issue, but we knew we needed to block automatic updates for M365 to prevent Office from updating to a new build again. We downloaded the Office Administrative Template files from the link below and copied the ADMX files to the DC at C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions so that they would be visible in the Group Policy Management Console:

Download Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) for Microsoft Office from Official Microsoft Download Center

We created a new Group Policy Object (GPO) with the following settings, using the “Target Version” to set Office 365 to build 16.0.19231.20156. Initially, this appeared to prevent Office updates but the next morning, the system had updated again.

Fixing the “Ignore GPO” Registry Issue

Further research led to the Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365:
Overview of Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365 – Microsoft 365 Apps | Microsoft Learn

We located the additional registry keys that were applied by the Cloud Policy to the Remote Desktop Server that users were running GP from, and confirmed one of the keys was “ignoregpo” which told Office to ignore any Group Policy Settings. This meant the Cloud Policy would override. To fix this and let the GPO control, we used Registry Editor and updated the two keys ignoregpo and enableautomaticupdates to both have a value of zero as shown below under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\cloud\office\16.0\Common\officeupdate:

Setting these keys then blocked updates from automatically installing, as shown within the Excel application:

If you prefer to create a reg file to apply these two keys, you can use the following:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\cloud\office\16.0\Common\officeupdate]
“ignoregpo”=dword:00000000
“enableautomaticupdates”=dword:00000000

Once updated, this successfully blocked automatic Office updates and stopped the recurring Dynamics GP Word Template error.

Awaiting Microsoft’s Permanent Fix

We will await further details from the Microsoft Dynamics GP team regarding any software updates or patches for a long-term resolution. For now, this workaround allows users to continue printing Word Templates in GP without generating the WINWORD.EXE error.
Crestwood is here to help support existing GP clients continue to use GP successfully while they evaluate all their options. We also offer Cloud Hosting for GP, and we can help you successfully evaluate other ERP solutions when you are ready to migrate from GP to your next ERP.