Forum Discussion
Remote desktop app hangs when opening a new process
I have a windows remote desktop server, windows server 2022. We have a few programs we allow access to people published as remote apps. One of the programs exports to Excel by opening excel, creates the workbook/worksheet, but the window does not show and the program hangs waiting for excel to close. The user can't see excel and therefore can't close excel so they are stuck. as an admin, I can connect to the remote desktop server and end task on their excel instance and then they can continue working.
Is there a way to allow the excel window to show when opened by a remote app?
We prefer to only allow our users access to the one app they need to run instead of a desktop.
1 Reply
Hi ClayFrie,
This sounds like a RemoteApp limitation rather than an Excel issue itself.
When an application is published as a RemoteApp, any child processes it launches do not always behave the same way they would in a full remote desktop session. I've seen cases where an application starts Excel successfully, but the Excel window never gets presented to the user, causing the parent application to wait indefinitely for Excel to close.
A few questions:
- Does Excel appear in the user's session when viewed through Task Manager or Remote Desktop Services Manager?
- Is Excel also published as a RemoteApp, or only the primary application?
- Does the export work correctly if the same user is given a full remote desktop session instead of the published app?
If it works in a full desktop session but not as a RemoteApp, that would point strongly toward a RemoteApp window-handling issue. You might also try publishing Excel as a RemoteApp to see whether that allows the spawned Excel window to be presented correctly.
I'm curious whether others running Server 2022 RemoteApp have seen the same behavior with Office applications.
