Problem opening spreadsheets in Excel 2016 since Win 11 24H2 upgrade

Question

We have just updated to Win 11 24H2 and use stand alone Office 2016 Standard. We are experiencing problems with opening Excel spreadsheets from hyperlinks and File Explorer where a ~$ temp file pre-exists against the file we are trying to open. Excel stops at Loading 0% and never completes the action - only recourse is to End Task on Excel in Task Manager. If Excel is already open then things work fine.

File association is fine; testing an old machine still at Win 11 22H2 shows no such problems.

Answer 1

Hello，

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft Community forum.

You can try the following steps to troubleshoot the problem:

1. Make sure Office 2016 is fully updated.
2. Try to disable all Excel add-ons. You can do this in the following ways:

Open Excel. Go to: File > Options > Add-Ins.

At the bottom of the window, make sure the Manage: COM plug-ins is selected, and then click Start.

Deselect all plug-ins and click OK.

3. Dynamic Data Interchange (DDE) sometimes causes problems opening Excel files. Try disabling "Enable Dynamic Data Exchange Server Lookup" to test.

This option is located in the Excel Trust Center (Trust Center > File > Options > Trust Center Settings > External Content).

 

Reference:

Security settings for Dynamic Data Exchange in Excel Trust Center - Microsoft 365 Apps | Microsoft Learn

I hope this helps.

Best regards

Jacen

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Answer 2

Same issue here with Excel 2013 & 2016 across all client sites. If you try to open an Excel file that someone currently has open which creates the ~$filename.xls(x) file in the same directory, Excel stops responding on the Starting screen (0%) and you cannot launch another iteration of Excel. You have to first End Task or taskkill excel.exe. The next attempt to open that same file, it will open because Excel placed the file name on the Disabled List that forces Excel to generate a message box stating, "The last time you opened ‘test.xlsx’, it caused a serious error. Do you still want to open it? [Yes][No]". If the user selects [Yes], then Excel is able to present the ‘File in Use’ dialog box to open it as Read Only, Notify, or Cancel". Our workaround is to share the workbook so that those ~$filename.xls(x) files aren't created in the first place and this works for Excel 2013 & 2016. Open the workbook, click Review tab > Share Workbook > Allow changes by more than one user at the same time. This also requires disabling privacy (File tab > Excel Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options category > disable (clear the checkbox) Remove Personal Information From File Properties On Save). No ~$filename.xls(x) files are created. Eventually, I’ll have to script it because there are thousands of workbooks but for now, I’m going to tweak only the most often shared workbooks because I’m not sure if it’ll break other Excel functionality due to VBA, macros, and linked workbooks. Still hoping Microsoft comes out with a fix but as stated by someone else, they’re taking Office 2016\2019 off extended support come October 2025 so not holding my breath. I got the suggestion to share the workbook from another user. If you search for "After upgrading to Windows 11 24H2, Excel 2016 is unable to open certain files" you can see the whole thread.