Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action.

Anonymous
2010-07-07T05:03:49+00:00

I am testing Excel 2010 on a few Windows 7 pc.  2 of them somethings get the following error after saving a file.  Click ok and then it appears after 10 seconds. It just keep going on until I kill the excel process.  Please assist.

"Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action."

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2010-07-07T05:24:34+00:00

Hi,

You could try choosing File, Options, Advanced, and under General check Ignore other applications that use DDE.

If this answer solves your problem, please check, Mark as Answered. If this answer helps, please click the Vote as Helpful button. Cheers Shane Devenshire

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-03-05T20:42:00+00:00

    Windows 7;Excel 2010; the problem occurred when I tried to embed a pdf into a worksheet.

    I thought about following a suggestion I read somewhere else -- cancel the excel.exe process -- but I didn't want to go through the hassle of probably losing recent changes, and had a number of workbook open at the time. So, while I was in the process monitor anyway, I browsed through the list of processes to see if I could find anything that might be the bottleneck. I noticed two instances of acrord32.exe, which I guess had something to do with reading pdf files..( I did indeed have 4 pdf's open in the (free) adobe reader.) So I cancelled both of those processes and the lock freed up immediately.

    Hope this helps someone.

    Phil

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-03-01T16:04:49+00:00

    I have found a few tricks that seem to have worked for us for a couple weeks now - One is with Excel open, open Task Manager and right click on the Excel Process, change to High Priority, exit and re-open Excel, 2 is to remove Live Essentials from Programs and Features or Add and Remove Programs on XP, also from the same Location if using Office 2010, remove the Outlook Social Connector from the Office Install by clicking change (Dont know if 2007 uses this, we skipped over it due to many warnings on how bad it is) Dont just disable it in the Add ins, Microsoft likes to enable them after a few reboots. Let me know if these helped you also.

    Thanks

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-07-19T14:41:26+00:00

    The following works in Excel 2003.  I have not tried it in Excel 2010:

    Add the code below to a VBA module, then call KillMessageFilter() to turn off the OLE messages

    Private Declare Function CoRegisterMessageFilter Lib "ole32" (ByVal IFilterIn As Long, ByRef PreviousFilter) As Long

    Public Sub KillMessageFilter()

       Dim IMsgFilter As Long

       CoRegisterMessageFilter 0&, IMsgFilter

    End Sub

    Public Sub RestoreMessageFilter()

       Dim IMsgFilter As Long

       CoRegisterMessageFilter IMsgFilter, IMsgFilter

    End Sub

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-07-06T18:14:01+00:00

    I am getting this same message but through a word file. In the word file I have an excel table embedded. When I try to edit the excel table, I continue to get this message with no avail. I have gone into Excel and checked to Ignore other applications that use DDE. Any other suggestions?

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