Excel 2016 hangs when launching off network

2019-04-23

Question

_{Tuesday, April 23, 2019 5:06 PM}

Hello,

We have a user who was trying to open excel on her work laptop from home without being on an internet connection. When doing so, the program just hangs on the startup window and will not go any further. The program actually launches once the user connects to our VPN.

When we first received this report, I thought it was an issue of launching a spreadsheet that was saved on our network from a shortcut. This is not the case, as I have tested on a laptop and gotten the same result. When I turn wifi off and open Excel it just hangs. When connecting to our internal network it opens without any issue.

I made sure there were no add-ins that were trying to call a network resource that could be causing the issue. The only thing I could see is that in the Save settings within Excel there are two paths set to save on our network, but this has always been the case and we have not heard reports of this issue in the past.

Has anyone heard of this issue and is there any sort of fix for this?

Thanks in advance!

All replies (3)

_{Wednesday, April 24, 2019 9:52 AM}

Hi,

Are you run Excel by opening an Excel file or Excel Application?

When you try to open a file from a network location, the hangs may be occur if the network location is lost during the time that your Office program is opening the file.

You could try the follow methods to fix the problem.

Using fix tool. Review An Office program is slow or may appear to stop responding (hang) when you open a file from a network location and find the location:

Following the steps in the easy fix wizard.

2. Modify the registry manually. Attention that serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information, review How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

Then follow these steps to modify registry manually:

Step 1. Close your Office programs.
Step 2. Click “Start”, and then click “Run”.
Step 3. In the “Open” box, type “regedit”, and then click “OK”.
Step 4. Locate, and then click to select the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Open Find
step 5. After you select the key that is specified in step 4, point to “New” on the “Edit” menu, and then click “DWORD Value”.
Step 6. Type “EnableShellDataCaching”, and then press ENTER.
Step 7. Right-click “EnableShellDataCaching”, and then click “Modify”.
Step 8. In the “Value data” box, type 1, and then click “OK”.
Note Any non-zero number in the “Value data” box will turn on caching. A zero number or blank (default) will turn off caching.
Step 9. On the “File” menu, click“Exit” to quit Registry Editor.

If the issue is still persist, please try running excel in safe mode (Press Win + R, type “excel /safe”, press Enter.) and check the result.

Any update, feel free to post back.

Regards,

Bella Wu

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_{Wednesday, April 24, 2019 2:45 PM}

Thanks for the reply. It occurs when opening the excel application directly from the start menu. It is occurring on all of our machines in our environment and is not local to just one machine. I also forgot to mention in the original post that we are running Office 2016, but are testing Office Pro Plus as well in IT and are seeing the same problem. Whenever you are off network, Excel hangs and never opens. Once you connect to VPN or our internal network, it opens immediately. Very odd. In this instance there are no enabled add-ins and the only thing I could see that might possibly cause this is the save settings pointing to network locations.

_{Tuesday, April 30, 2019 5:54 AM}

Hi,

I am sorry for my delay reply.

Is there any error code when Excel hang? Have you tried safe mode to open Excel without network? Can other office products such as Word, PPT, etc. be used normally?

You might need to set Windows Update to automatically download, and install recommended updates. Check to see if your antivirus software is up-to-date or conflicting with Excel.

<< …The only thing I could see is that in the Save settings within Excel there are two paths set to save on our network…

Could you try to delete this path save location on a single computer, to see if this is the reason.

If you have any problems, please feel free to post back.