I've started digging around in my Control Panel > Event Viewer too, which I'm not that savvy with interpreting. I get similar errors to Ethan
An error occurred:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
...... and so on
and spotted one that sounds like a permission error:
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{D63B10C5-BB46-4990-A94F-E40B9D520160}
and APPID
{9CA88EE3-ACB7-47C8-AFC4-AB702511C276}
to the user (suppressed my ID here) SID (S-1-5-21-3219648850-738124763-203175933-125472) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.
Now, I don't have administrative privileges with my account, but I shouldn't have to for this sort of work. I went back to the requirements page, and I see there is one version of Office 2016 that is known to have problems:
Caution:
*With Microsoft Office 2016 version 16.0.6326.1010, ArcGIS Maps for Office backstage controls do not function as designed. All other Microsoft Office 2016 versions are supported.
I checked, and this is not the version we have, which is 16.0.4849.1000