What Is Microsoft AU Daemon? Here’s Everything You Should Know

Wondering what is Microsoft AU Daemon? What does it do? and What are the pros and cons of having it? And all such related queries, about the Microsoft AU Daemon, are going to be answered here!

Most of us have used Microsoft Office’s apps at some point. Some famous and widely used apps are Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote, Access, Publisher, etc. The best thing about this app is that you can easily update them to enjoy new features.

There are various ways to manage updates of Microsoft Office apps like automatically updating apps through the internet, using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, or reinstalling updated versions of the app on your system. The simplest way to update these apps is by automatically updating it using Microsoft’s in-built program, and here comes in the picture Microsoft AU Daemon (AU – Automatic update) to accomplish this task.

What is Microsoft AU Daemon?

If you are using a licensed copy of Microsoft Office apps, then Microsoft AU Daemon is the dedicated update program that comes installed with all Microsoft Office apps and connects the client with the Microsoft Office server,

 The primary function of this program is to 

1. Periodically check for the updates for any Microsoft Office apps available on Office’s server.
2. Download files for the update.
3. Replace old files with the updated files in the app.

Each Office app, like Word, Excel PowerPoint, has separate Microsoft AU Daemon instances to ensure that the user enjoys all updated features of the specific app irrespective of whether he is using all apps of Microsoft Office. Along with updating apps, this program plays a crucial role in downloading and installing security patches for Microsoft’s specific app.

Pros:

1. Updating apps using Microsoft AU Daemon requires very less administrative efforts.
2. It hardly uses any space in the memory.
3. It automatically gets initiated and runs as the background process, and there is no need to start this program.
4. You don’t have to separately install it on your system as it comes integrated with the Office apps.

Cons:

1. You have very little control over the update process.
2. Some users have reported that whenever the user opens the Microsoft Office app message box to ask whether to launch Microsoft AU Daemon repeatedly appears on the screen which is a bit annoying.
3. You don’t have control over installing or uninstalling it.
4. It slows down the performance of the system sometimes.

What to do if Microsoft AU Daemon is not working?

If you notice that your application is not getting updated regularly, then there is a possibility that Microsoft AU Daemon is not working appropriately. You can troubleshoot it to resume its functionality. Follow the below-given steps to fix any issues with it.

1. Type Control Panel in the Cortana search bar and open it.
2. Go to Program -> Uninstall a program.
3. Select the Microsoft Office app in which you are facing difficulty.
4. Right-click on the app and choose the change option.

5. A new window will open, click on the Repair option and follow the wizard to finish it.

6. Reboot your system and now check if Microsoft AU Daemon is working fine.

The following article will discuss switching from automatic updates to manually checking updates, which is necessary if it leads to some problems in your system.

How to uninstall Microsoft AU Daemon?

As you don’t have control over installing this program in the same way, you cannot uninstall it, but the option closer to this is disabling it. It is not recommended to permanently disable this program as you might miss necessary security patches for your apps. Check how with few clicks, you can disable it.

Disable Microsoft AU Daemon In Windows.

Log in as an administrator in your system to make changes in the settings.

Steps:

1. Open the app for which you want to disable Microsoft AU Daemon. Suppose it is Microsoft Word.
2. Click on File and press on the New option. Choose a blank document.
3. Click on the create button.
4. Go to File -> Account.

5. A new window opens, click on Update Options and select Disable updates.

6. Click on Yes when prompted to confirm.

7. Reboot your device and now again open Microsoft Word 
8. Open Task Manager by pressing Control + Shift + Delete key.
9. Check if there is any process of Microsoft AU Daemon running in the background process section.

Disable Microsoft AU Daemon In Mac

Mac OS is well known for ensuring its client’s security by offering a highly protected system, due to the same reason it prompts whenever Microsoft AU Daemon tries to install updates on your PC. It asks for user permission before allowing this process to modify your device. Prompting to get user’s consent before any modification is the safe practice but, at the same time, very frustrating due to repeated interruption messages. So many users opt to delete this update process. Steps to remove this process from your MAC machine are as follows:

1. Open Macintosh HD. You can find out detailed steps to open it on this website.
2. Goto Library -> Application Support -> Microsoft -> MAU 2.0 -> Microsoft Auto update.

3. A new window will open, and you can choose the update option. In this case, we will select a Manually Check option for updates.

4. Restart your system and check if the automatic process still appears in the activity monitor window.

Bottom Line:

You can allow it to run as a background process and keep your Microsoft Office’s apps up to date, or you can disable it and manually check for the updates. In this article, we have described steps to disable this process on Windows and MAC. While you figure out, we see that you would also like to check the best download managers for Windows OS, macOS, and Android. Let us know if this article helped you to understand the details of Microsoft AU Daemon.