Using Catalina 10.15.5 on my 2019 iMac. I am about to lose my mind with the verification process that is frequently kicking in when I launch Excel and, less frequently, Word, and PowerPoint. The verification process will begin and then freeze up before it finishes OR, if I wait long enough, it will stop but the app is frozen and I have to force quit. I am shifting my work over to my MacBook because it is taking too long to get things done - 5 to 10 minutes to get Excel loaded. Does anyone have a suggestion? I understand there may be a terminal command to override the verification process. Many thanks. 
Maybe the verification that the OS does after update.
if you mean the Gatekeeper verification process, you can bypass that if you want. You’re losing the protection that Apple thinks you should have, but I trust you to make that decision if you want.
Copy and paste these 4 lines into Terminal:
sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine \
"/Applications/Microsoft Word.app" \
"/Applications/Microsoft Excel.app" \
"/Applications/Microsoft PowerPoint.app"
Once you do that (and press ‘Enter/Return’ if you need to), it will prompt you for your password (the one that you use to log in to your Mac) and then it will run the command.
If all goes well, you will not see any output.
p.s. - does your iMac have an SSD or an HD/Fusion Drive?
1 Like
Are you using the direct download version of the Office apps, or the Mac App Store version?