Forum Discussion
no links/VBA/addons, but : Microsoft excel waiting for another application to complete an ole action
Hi,
Excel stops working about every 20 minutes for a few minutes -I just have to wait - and then this message pops up: ""microsoft excel waiting for another application to complete an ole action". Thereafter it works again, I can save etc., but it is highly interruptive and annoying.
The excel files does not have any links, embedded files, not a single add-on is activated in excel.
I have checked all the common hints that can be found, ticked "ignore other applications using DDE" in excel options, updated the office package, updated windows - nothing I have tried so far helps.
Again, the weird thing is that there are no embedded links or the like, and I have no idea what the reason could be for this error message to keep emerging.
Any advice is highly appreciated!
Thanks
Helen
50 Replies
I'm sure I'm wasting my breath/time with this post, but hey Microsoft ... why haven't you fixed this problem or provided official workaround instructions (that actually work) that we can use until you fix it? It's great that community members share potential fixes, but those fixes clearly don't work for everyone, so we waste a lot of valuable time trying various fixes that end up not working. I do not have enough free time to keep searching for and trying potential fixes until one works (because frankly most of them don't work). As you can see from just this one post, this particular problem has been occurring for YEARS and affects many Office users. We pay you a lot of money to use your software, why can't you fix serious problems (like this one) when we bring them to your attention? Or at least provide official RELIABLE workaround instructions that actually work? Please fix this problem now because we have suffered long enough!
Neither my simple brain can understand why a leading company like MS lets people around the globe waste hours of their time to finish Office programs with Task Manager just because there is not an option available that allows the user to
- STOP ALL ONGOING PROCESSES and save the work they've been doing the past 2 hours.
or
- AUTOMATICALLY SAVE their work every 15 min. to a selectable temp folder
Over 30 years of OLE and Microsoft was unable to make the Cancel button in that error dialog aborting the OLE action. Shall we proposed this for an entry in the guiness book of records?
We do always get new office versions, even sharepoint online with an excel with stripped down functionality that noone can use. But noone cares about annoying bugs that make you lose your work.
As you can guess on my frustration level I have 12 excel sheets open that I need to force close because of that bug. Two of them containing changed data that I can't save. I dared trying to open an excel embedded in word.
- Have followed this for a while. None of the causes mentioned here applied in my case. It has nothing to do with OneDrive or Google Drive.
I mostly solved this but installing the 64-bit version of Excel. I was seeing this issue at least 2-3x per month previously. Since installing the 64-bit version I've had this issue once in 6 months. NLysette Your suggestion to check to ignore other applications that use DDE seems to have fixed my issue. Now I want to understand what a DDE?
Hi BirdieErnie, I think I can answer that...
DDE - Direct Data Exchange works by creating a memorised link between objects. A bit like typing '=A1' into cell A2 on a spreadsheet will link the two cells together, such that typing anything in cell A1 will magically appear in cell A2.However, as simple as that sounds, it gets more complicated when you link cells to locations in other places. It's OK between 2 cells in the same spreadsheet, or even between tabs, but if you're linking between two or more spreadsheets, between tables and charts or other MS packages (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) then the links can be difficult to follow. And the more links, the more time it takes to locate and update them.
That's what causes DDE to hang/fail. If you send/receive a file from someone and it has links then when it's opened Microsoft will try to update the file with the latest data. To achieve this it will try to find the links. It only takes one of these links to point to say, a SharePoint directory, a spreadsheet that you haven't shared, or a spreadsheet sitting on the powered-off laptop in the boot of your car and hey presto - DDE failure!
As another little bonus, there is also likely to be a time limit for searching for those links. Microsoft (quite rightly) don't expect you to wait forever, so it gives up searching after a set amount of time - result = DDE failure!
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!
Ok I have the same error it drives me nuts. I can be working with the most plain excel file and it happens. I noticed it happens the most when I insert columns. It doesn't stop until i restart and it last for like half an hour and then it starts again. Tried all standard fixes recommend to no avail.
- Hi,
I think is it absolutely be affected by Google Drive.
The solution is you save Excel files which you are opening to edit in the same location. (all in Google Drive or all in Local Hard Drive).In my case the issue was caused by the size of the data set and the lag in syncing the data to the could.
My suggestion.
- Copy the file out of your cloud drive, (Google or OneDrive)
- work with it locally and
- then copy it back to your preferred cloud drive when you're done or periodically as a backup.
- Unbelievable that this is still an issue in 2021. It takes too much debugging to figure out. I use several plug-ins and I can't do my job without them. Disabling them all to troubleshoot this is not something I can do. This is extremely intermittent for me. I'll go days or weeks without this error, and will then get it 3 times in one week. This latest instance I had pasted a chart to an Outlook message. I did not make any changes to it. I was using a temp Excel sheet that was not saved. All my sheets are saved on my MS OneDrive.
The only way I can use Excel again is to shut down all my apps and re-boot. That this error happens is bad enough. That there is not timeout or ignore option is simply unacceptable. It's essentially like having a Microsoft virus that is losing my work, corrupting my Excel files, and costing my far too much time. MS needs to fix this!I agree David, it should not be happening. However, if it's any help, I believe I know why it's happened this time around. By the way, charts are notorious for this.
If you create a chart in excel, presumably it will be based on data (a table of some sort). If you cut or copy the chart to another tab, it will still show the correct values (as it's linked to the original data). If you cut or copy it to an email, powerPoint or anywhere alse, it wil remain linked to the original data. You've deleted the original (temporary) spreadsheet and Excel is an unhappy bunny!
Unfortunately, I don't have a fix for this and I suspect Microsoft don't either, as it would require them adding a timeout code or a way to break unmatched links.
However, for future cases, I'd suggest pasting the chart as a picture i.e. rather than using a normal paste use paste special.
I know it doesn't help in this case but in the past when I've faced the problem, I've looked for VBA code or used Excel tools like Inquire, to see if I can fix the problem. Other than that, I've had to dissable my addins (in some cases removing them) and reinstalling.
All I can say is it's bloody annoying!
I started having this same issue yesterday, trying to open my daily spreadsheet with no links or anything unusual - just a plain spreadsheet. I have my Excel files stored in MS OneDrive. Opening it on the website and downloading it to my computer allows me to open it, but this isn't optimal as I have a lot of files I use and my computer storage is limited. I will probably try deleting and reinstalling Office but not really sure why this would be an issue, all of a sudden. Worked fine on Sunday, problem on Monday. Very frustrating.
This seems to correlate with the time that Microsoft apps started to replace pasted html links with names or thumbnails. It seems the app is trying to access the links at unexpected times to do whatever, but since I'm not on my company VPN at the time, the links become unreachable, causing all manner of havoc. I can't turn off this mysterious link accessing behavior.
