Excel waiting for another application to complete an ole action persists after all suggested fixes

[Sharpsburgian]

Problem has gotten increasingly worse over time and now Excel in Microsoft Office 365 is fully unusable. After one action, it freezes and eventually gives me the OLE error. Clicking to save the file also immediately locks up Excel and the OLE error appears, so I'm unable to save anything either.

I have done all the prescribed fixes...closed and repopened the program, rebooted the computer, went into advance options and unchecked all Excel add-in and click to ignore all DDE. The issue persists unchanged.

[#2]

I have lately had serous problems with Excel and have had to redo a lot (many hours) of work. I learned from this experience an saved the file frequently. Now I cannot open the saved file....
waiting for OLE to complete