Office 365 Excel showing "Not Responding" and running very slow after Jan 11th Windows 10 Update Tue

Hello Everyone,

Wanted to throw this out to ya all and see if anyone have a solution that might help with multiple users experiencing an issue with Office 365 Excel product after Jan 11th Tuesday update.

We have multiple users complaining that MS Excel is freezing upon start-up and shows "Not Responding" for at least 30-90 seconds then finally opening up then moving really slow.

I've gone thru all steps found on internet to fix it and couldn't find a an easy solution but I was able to fix 2 Users with the following steps, which is very aggravating and time consuming

1. Start excel in safe mode - doesn't help

2. Updated with latest version of office 365 16 (Version 2112(Build 14729.20260) - still the same

3. Checked add-ins the only add-in was Adobe Acrobat and disabled it and still same issue

4. Repaired office 365 using Quick Repair and Online Repair - same issue with Excel

5. Under Excel Options -> General -> User Interface Option -> When using multiple displays: Optimize for compatibility vs. Optimize for best appearance - same issue

6. Antivirus up to date (running Symantec Endpoint protection from the server)

7. Uninstalled Office 365 and logged in and re-installed it again / then rebooted PC - same issue

8. logged out as user on user's workstation (PC) and logged as myself(Admin) within excel application, then closed and re-opened Excel - still have same issue

9. Checked under email accounts and had an issue where corp email account user and personal user account was logged with, deactivated personal user account and rebooted pc and logged out from the Admin user from excel

10. logged back in as user and still continue to have issues.

11. when logged in as User on another test workstation - issue with excel continued with a brand new re-imaged windows 10 20h1 OS and lasted build of office 365 ( user had not logged to this machine prior to this issue)

12. on the test machine once saw that issue has transferred to a brand new machine logged-in as user, logged out from excel as user and login as myself and issue stopped - excel started to work normally on that machine only

13. Closed and Re-opened excel, then logged out from admin user account and logged as user within excel app and issue stopped - working normally

14. went back to user's machine and then logged out from excel as user, login as admin and issue stopped as well - working normally

15. login as user and it shown in title bar - "Unlincensed Account" then re-activated excel and opened it and since then it started to work as normall.

Wanted to see if there is any specific way to shorten this resolution path a get a straight answer from Microsoft on What exactly had happened on 1/11/2022 Windows update that has caused this issue 

Thanks.

Sergey Zaikin (IT PRO)