Forum Discussion

ClayFrie's avatar
ClayFrie
Copper Contributor
Jun 01, 2026

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, create...
remoteapp
windows server
lkadirozcan's avatar
lkadirozcan
Copper Contributor
Jun 01, 2026

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.