Forum Discussion
Excel/Word crashing when co authoring
Has anyone had any issues when co authoring in either excel or word? Both programs crash unexpectedly, but with no warning or error message. Nothing shows in the event logs as to what happened. This only happens when co authoring, and only one user is removed from the doc, when they are removed, they still appear to be in the document to the other users in the doc at that time. Reopening the doc picks up where they left off, but its massively affecting production!
I currently have a ticket open with 365 support (Ticket #:12768014) but we dont seem to be getting anywhere at the moment.
Thanks in advance, Gary.
42 Replies
- i dont know whether any of you are still having these issues, but my client hasn't had the issue in over a week now!!! i haven't been able to speak with MS directly as they keep assigning engineers that are nowhere near my timezone (there should be a policy for this in the 1st place)!
gbrown481 Did you disable OneDrive sync? The issue seems to occur either when one user opens a file from OneDrive rather than Sharepoint AND/OR if "Use Office to sync files I open" is enabled in OneDrive.
Also, one of my colleagues was told by Microsoft yesterday that in order for Coauthoring to be fully supported, MS Office needs to be in the "monthly" update channel rather than "semi-annual targeted" because the feature set pushed out is different.
- The client in question doesn't use the OneDrive client at all. they go direct to SharePoint using a drive mapping tool. They are on the standard release track on monthly already. I confirmed with one of the clients yesterday that they havent seen the issue for over a week now, so something must have been bundled into one of the updates released recently.
Yes! I'm not the only one! My co-worker and I are having the exact same issue. Hopefully MS gets a fix out soon.
- MS didn't ring when we had pre-arranged to, so no further with them specifically. although, I did some testing on the 2 users that have the issue the most, and for the life of me I couldn't get it to crash, I tried for half an hour, it usually happens within a couple of minutes. They are now both using Version 1902 (Build 11328.20100)
Yes, we have a client that has been having this issue. Here is what I've been able to find:
- User A and User B open the file from SharePoint Online using "Edit in Browser" - No Problems.
- User A and User B open the file from SharePoint Online using "Edit in Word/Excel" - No problems ( I think)
- User A opens online and User B Opens in local app - May have an issue.
- User A opens from OneDrive synced to SharePoint, User B opens from SharePoint - Will randomly crash.
- User A opens from SharePoint, either in browser or app, and User B opens from SharePoint in File Explorer, then opens in local app - Random crashes.
The underlying problem appears to be the Auto-Save feature added to OneDrive for Business in the fall coupled with having OneDrive sync to SharePoint enabled and allowed. All the documentation on coauthoring I have seen indicates that you need a shared source for the files, and on-prem SharePoint, O365 SharePoint, One Drive and OneDrive for Business are all candidates, but nothing says anything about if you have SharePoint synced with OneDrive.
That said, I also opened a ticket with Microsoft, and was verbally told, definitely opening from two different locations, (i.e. SharePoint and OneDrive) definitely WILL break coauthoring and cause the applications to crash. But there is NOTHING in print as of this writing that officially states that.
I think this is a scenario that Microsoft didn't think of, and didn't test, and the Office Suite has no error handling for.
Our only solution at the moment is to disable OneDrive sync to SharePoint, but I have one client that doesn't accept that answer, and getting detailed information involving all the possible parameters from end users is nigh on impossible.
Does the issue described below have a work around. It is now 2022 and we are experiencing a problem with Microsoft Word locking up when multiple solution architects are adding content to the document.
Encore_Technologies The original problem we were having was resolved in Build 1904 back in 2019. If the problem has resurfaced in a current version I would recommend starting a new thread.
Good luck.
Did Microsoft have an update on this issue?
Thanks
Saunit
- Hi Saunit,
no fix/update as of yet!
I have been assigned an MS ambassador now, we have a call scheduled for tomorrow, so, will see what comes of that.
Thanks GaryGreat! keep us posted!
/ Adam
Yes, my coworkers and I have been having this issue for weeks. I've had to change my auto save setting to every minute so I don't lose any data when Word, Excel or PowerPoint crashes.
- Have you found anything to help it or stop it? Its so intermittent that it makes it so hard to predict
