Excel/Word crashing when co authoring

Copper Contributor

Has anyone had any issues when co authoring in either excel or word? Both programs crash unexpectedly, but with no warning or error message. Nothing shows in the event logs as to what happened. This only happens when co authoring, and only one user is removed from the doc, when they are removed, they still appear to be in the document to the other users in the doc at that time. Reopening the doc picks up where they left off, but its massively affecting production!

 

I currently have a ticket open with 365 support (Ticket #:12768014) but we dont seem to be getting anywhere at the moment. 

Thanks in advance, Gary.

42 Replies

Yes, my coworkers and I have been having this issue for weeks. I've had to change my auto save setting to every minute so I don't lose any data when Word, Excel or PowerPoint crashes.

Have you found anything to help it or stop it? Its so intermittent that it makes it so hard to predict

Did Microsoft have an update on this issue?

 

Thanks

Saunit

Hi Saunit,

no fix/update as of yet!

I have been assigned an MS ambassador now, we have a call scheduled for tomorrow, so, will see what comes of that.

Thanks Gary

Great! keep us posted!

 

/ Adam

Yes, we have a client that has been having this issue. Here is what I've been able to find:

  • User A and User B open the file from SharePoint Online using "Edit in Browser" - No Problems.
  • User A and User B open the file from SharePoint Online using "Edit in Word/Excel"  - No problems ( I think)
  • User A opens online and User B Opens in local app - May have an issue.
  • User A opens from OneDrive synced to SharePoint, User B opens from SharePoint - Will randomly crash.
  • User A opens from SharePoint, either in browser or app, and User B opens from SharePoint in File Explorer, then opens in local app - Random crashes.

The underlying problem appears to be the Auto-Save feature added to OneDrive for Business in the fall coupled with having OneDrive sync to SharePoint enabled and allowed. All the documentation on coauthoring I have seen indicates that you need a shared source for the files, and on-prem SharePoint, O365 SharePoint, One Drive and OneDrive for Business are all candidates, but nothing says anything about if you have SharePoint synced with OneDrive. 

That said, I also opened a ticket with Microsoft, and was verbally told, definitely opening from two different locations, (i.e. SharePoint and OneDrive) definitely WILL break coauthoring and cause the applications to crash. But there is NOTHING in print as of this writing that officially states that.

 

I think this is a scenario that Microsoft didn't think of, and didn't test, and the Office Suite has no error handling for.

 

Our only solution at the moment is to disable OneDrive sync to SharePoint, but I have one client that doesn't accept that answer, and getting detailed information involving all the possible parameters from end users is nigh on impossible.

I'd like to hear more details from Microsoft as well!  

MS didn't ring when we had pre-arranged to, so no further with them specifically. although, I did some testing on the 2 users that have the issue the most, and for the life of me I couldn't get it to crash, I tried for half an hour, it usually happens within a couple of minutes. They are now both using Version 1902 (Build 11328.20100)

Yes! I'm not the only one! My co-worker and I are having the exact same issue. Hopefully MS gets a fix out soon.

i dont know whether any of you are still having these issues, but my client hasn't had the issue in over a week now!!! i haven't been able to speak with MS directly as they keep assigning engineers that are nowhere near my timezone (there should be a policy for this in the 1st place)!

@gbrown481 Did you disable OneDrive sync? The issue seems to occur either when one user opens a file from OneDrive rather than Sharepoint AND/OR if "Use Office to sync files I open" is enabled in OneDrive.

 

Also, one of my colleagues was told by Microsoft yesterday that in order for Coauthoring to be fully supported, MS Office needs to be in the "monthly" update channel rather than "semi-annual targeted" because the feature set pushed out is different.

The client in question doesn't use the OneDrive client at all. they go direct to SharePoint using a drive mapping tool. They are on the standard release track on monthly already. I confirmed with one of the clients yesterday that they havent seen the issue for over a week now, so something must have been bundled into one of the updates released recently.

Hi

 

So glad to hear that we aren´t the only ones with this problem. My Word/Powerpoint crashes, whenever I am co-authoring with my colleagues. We have had the problem for about 2 months.

The app can run for 1 hour, then crash, then run for 1 min before crash. No pattern I can find.

I am getting desperate, thinking about going back to the old days, where you had local copies that was put together in the end.

I am still experiencering the problem :(

I've been having the same issue with two of my users. They are using co-authoring on excel and they always click 'open in excel' since not all the features they need are available on excel online. I have set them up on the same version. Both are on the semi-annual 1808 channel and on Ver. 10730.20304 and they still experience this issue.

Same issue still with Powerpoint, Excel and Word...

@gbrown481 We face the same issue while we are now in the pilot stage of migrating to Office365.

Do you have any update?

 

We are windows 10 / proplus monthly channel.

 

Thanks!

We have had the same issue now for about four weeks, and have raised the issue with Microsoft last week. We have navigated the tier 1 support and now are waiting to hear back.

 

Summary:-

  • We produce large documents in a collaborative fashion, by finding a document in a SharePoint Online document library using the 'Edit in Word' feature.
  • We have done this for a long time (co-authoring documents is a large part of what we do) and the issue has only started occurring (and with multiple people) within the last four weeks or so.
  • We all use Windows 7, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Office downloaded from Office365
  • Within a random amount of time (sometimes a few seconds, sometimes an hour), Word just closes.
  • End users do not have OneDrive installed or configured.
  • Tested with multiple users, multiple computers, multiple documents, multiple document libraries and sites.
  • Microsoft recorded a screen and was able to witness and acknowledge the behaviour twice. Hoping the issue gets escalated; we have a lot of angry users - which is frustrating when we have spent considerable efforts trying to build confidence in using SharePoint Online as a suitable platform for document collaboration

I'm curious to see if this affects organizations who are 100% in the cloud or like mine that are in a transition state and have some on prem stuff along with some being in the cloud.

either my client has stopped bothering to tell me about the issue, or the issue has gone away, as they haven't mentioned it for what feels like forever! In summary, I have found that in the past, the issue only happens when co authoring (which doesn't happen as often as it used to do, probably because of the issue in the 1st place!), but could be minutes, hours, or even just the 1st click that causes Word/Excel to close with no explanation. MS had been connected to my laptop at least 3 times when the issue occurred, and had no answer to what it could be. They seemed to just drop off the support ticket, but as the client hasnt reported the issue, I havent chased MS myself for a fix.