Forum Discussion
no links/VBA/addons, but : Microsoft excel waiting for another application to complete an ole action
Helen_M Has anyone found out why google file stream is causing this issue? Having my users save a copy of every excel file on their local station isn't feasible.
This problem has been giving my organization issues for the last 2 years. I have users who NEVER experience this problem and other users who experience it multiple times a day. Obviously it has to do with their day to day use of EXCEL. But invariably, it is my Power users in Finance that get hit with this issue since they live and breath in complex EXCEL spreadsheets all day, every day. I am no pollyana and believe there are multiple root causes for this error (hence the relative non-response from Microsoft). From Google Drive compatibility issues, to link resolution errors, to Virus Detection and blocking issues. It would be NICE if Microsoft would at least throw us all a bone and dump some debug info somewhere in APPDATA when this dialog box pops up so we poor working stiffs can attempt to identify WHERE the problem is coming from. This is a HUGE problem for my users when it crops up and there doesn't seem to be any logical way to troubleshoot and resolve it short of switching everyone to using Google Sheets for everything. After 40 years in the IT Business, my suggested resolution is to abandon Microsoft EXCEL. Are you LISTENING Microsoft? The solution is to switch to another product or product(s) because yours doesn't work reliably. So how about you throw us working stiffs a bone and help us deal with your unreliable software issue.
KarlKacerek I would be gone to Google Sheets in a second over this issue if I could. Where I work we are not allowed to use Google Sheets for the most sensitive information, which is what I work with all day. So no Google Sheets for me.
I'm running Excel 365 with a corporate license. I typically see this issue after I copy a chart from Excel and paste it into PowerPoint. I used to think it was me editing the chart in PowerPoint that caused the issue. I often see it only after pasting. I have gotten it after pasting charts into Outlook as well. For me, it's definitely triggered by pasting charts.And in the last month or so for me Excel often does not display in Task Manager when I get the OLE issue. So I have to run Taskview and Taskkill from a CMD prompt to get Excel to close. It's actually gotten worse rather than better.
I agree with another comment suggesting there are likely multiple causes for this and it's no doubt a difficult problem to diagnose. However, it's been too many years without a fix.
I'm not sure if my explanation will help but this is the way I believe things should happen when using OndDrive.
Firstly, if you're using a corporate OneDrive area, person A should create the file locally and then sync it to a private or business OneDrive/MS Teams shared area. Then, person B can open a copy from that shared place and save it to their own local area so it can be worked on. From then on both person, A, & person B can each open their local copy of the file and it will automatically be synced to the business OneDrive/MS Teams area (SharePoint) as and when they make changes [unless they turn off the sync option, in the top left-hand corner of their screens].
If someone e.g. Person B, tries to open the shared file on OneDrive WITHOUT saving it locally, this will cause problems (even if they're using only their personal OneDrive, based on my own experience!) as it will affect the connection back to person A. I think this is because synchronisation is only one way?
The second point, which may be more relevant to you, is that the OneDrive and Shared areas are not seen as being local to your machine (maybe in the Microsoft cloud or a business server held off-site) in which case, anything you do to a file in the cloud will be checked by your virus checking software. In other words, virus checkers rarely trust Excel or MS Word files because historically they could have contained malicious VBA code. So every time you make a change, the virus checker will look at the file to see if it's bad. Inserting a column means it needs to check every new cell - even if it turns out to be empty. Very time-consuming but it's trying to protect you and based on the same algorithms that check emails. How big your file is, how many calculations you have in it and what you've changed will impact these checks greatly. So the bottom line is, use your local copy, it should automatically sync up to OneDrive (can still be shared) and everything should then be ticket boo!
