FIXED: Office 2013 crashes when trying to "save as" or open and browse

So today I've come across this issue on my machine after installing a host of windows updates. I tend to install all updates on my machine to see what it breaks so my users don't have to experience the same pain. This one however was so frustrating because it involved workarounds that was tedious and time consuming and also because I use the MS Office application quite frequently. 

The Issue:

So every time I tried to open a document it would crash. I would get some "faulting application" message etc similar to 
"Faulting application name: POWERPNT.EXE, version: 15.0.4627.1000, time stamp: 0x538584c8"
"Faulting module name: mso.dll, version: 15.0.4631.1000, time stamp: 0x5396b083"
Blah Blah Blah


So then I realized I could not "save as" any documents either. Any attempt to open the explorer view and browse for documents results in a crash. 
All Office applications except outlook was affected.

Doing a office repair did not help.
Doing a uninstall and reinstall did not help.

I did some digging and found this to an issue relating to Office 2013. Most victims had Office 2013 with Windows 8/8.1 but reports show Win 7 with Office 2013 was also affected.

As a work around opening office in "safe mode" helped temporarily

Type winword /safe      - Opens Word
Type powerpnt /safe     - Opens Excel
Type excel /safe            - Opens Powerpoint

Type excel /safe and press Enter to start Excel 2013

• Type winword /safe and press Enter to start Word 2013.
• Type powerpnt /safe and press Enter to start PowerPoint 2013.

As a work around opening office in "safe mode" helped but did not resolve the issue


The Solution

Its yet another MS update that's suppose to improve stability and performance that breaks things.
The culprit is KB2880987

Simply go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > View Installed Updates > Search for KB2880987 and uninstall it.

That's it! Hope this has been informative and helpful for you.