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Question
Tuesday, October 15, 2019 8:36 PM
Sometimes our Office 2019 (on premises NOT 0365) comes up with 'Contacting the server for information' when starting. This takes about 15 - 20 seconds. I don't know if it succeeds or fails, but users get very agitated. Especially as normal start time for Excel is about 3 seconds.
How do I block this behaviour?
All replies (10)
Tuesday, October 15, 2019 8:40 PM
Hi,
Have you tried with the following solutions:
Regards,
SAAD Youssef
______
Please remember to mark the replies as answer if they help, thank you!
Wednesday, October 16, 2019 7:39 AM
Hi,
Just checking in to see if the information of SAAD Youssef was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.
Regards,
Emi Zhang
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].
Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Office 2019.
Thursday, October 17, 2019 2:11 AM
None of those things seems to be relevant.
This is when we start a program. So not:
Opening or Saving a file
Repairing an Office installation
Connecting to a Printer
Getting your New Office ready
Opening or Forwarding and email
Retrieving remote data.
These thigs in the list seem to relate to when the program is already running.
Thanks, Neal
Thursday, October 17, 2019 4:26 AM
I had the same issue, but primarily with Outlook. I found this on a Microsoft thread. Selecting the current Office version, it seems to have fixed the Outlook hanging problem. It might fix yours?:
hi folks - I believe our IT folks found a way to fix this. It stopped happening after the following actions were taken:
- Press Windows key
- Type regedit.exe
- Right Click on regedit and run as administrator
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common
- Right Click on Common > New > DWORD (32-bit) > enter BlockHTTPImages and set the value to 1
- Restart the machine
Hopefully this helps others with the same issue.
Thursday, October 17, 2019 9:14 AM
What is your MS Office version? Is it 64 or 32 bits?
Have you tried to repair or reinstall completely the MS Office?
Thursday, October 17, 2019 9:32 AM
Yes, I did. It made no difference. Another worker here has been having the same issue through multiple office versions.
Thursday, October 17, 2019 9:57 PM
We are using Office 2019 32 bit. We run the updater often and as of today (18 October 2019) we are running the latest build and we have just run windows updates etc.
This problem only pops up from time to time one random user a day on a network with about 60 users.
Not a big problem, but we just wanted to find out what was causing it and stop it.
Michelle, I'll try that registry later, but would like to know WHY it might work and what it might break. Why would blocking HTTP images allow Excel to start without the "contacting the server" error. Especially as there is no 'server' to contact.
Thanks, Neal
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 5:06 AM
Hi Neal,
Any updates about this problem now?
Did you install any add-ins in Office? Try to disable all add-ins and check the result.
Regards,
Emi Zhang
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].
Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Office 2019.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 6:39 PM
Same issue here with locally installed Office 2019. I have disabled all add ins and checked 'Don't Download Pictures' and the issue persists. This wasn't an issue until this month and does not occur with Outlook 2010 on my other PC.
Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician
Thursday, November 14, 2019 6:55 PM
Same issue here with locally installed Office 2019. I have disabled all add ins and checked 'Don't Download Pictures' and the issue persists. This wasn't an issue until this month and does not occur with Outlook 2010 on my other PC.
Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician
Unbelievably, MalwareBytes, which I have always used and have Lifetime licenses for, is apparently the cause for this horrific pain in the CPU. When I had upgraded Kaspersky AV recently, it did say that I would be upgrading with incompatible software, Malwarebytes, which I have always trusted. I am not aware of any updates to Malwarebytes, but if you are already running a great AV product, try uninstalling Malwarebytes and see if your 'Contacting the server for information' issue doesn't go away. I ended up getting the same message when I tried to open messages on both of my machines, one of which runs Outlook 2010, and the other Outlook 2019. Time will tell, but I'm hoping that I have finally nailed this. I will revisit this forum should I be proven wrong again :-)
Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician