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
    2012-07-03T16:10:43+00:00

    Phil

    You legend.  This works!

    "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.)"

    Thanks

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-04-18T16:04:33+00:00

    One workaround is to suppress the excel application messaging.

    Add the following code to the workbook open event

    Application.DisplayAlerts = False

    This worked for me.

    Hope it helps.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-08-11T05:21:14+00:00

    Hi I've been putting up with this for ages.  My experience is very consistent - Open Excel, I go to open a spread sheet and it locks up part way through and if I wait long enough I get this OLE error message.  I have found that if I open excel then click save or save as, dont actually save anything and cancel, back in normal screen, I can open file without issue.

    As long as I remember to do this I get no trouble- annoyiong but better than the error.

    Cheers

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-07-27T13:10:25+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

    I am facing this error, have kill it from Task Manager as it keeps popping up, does not allow anything else to be done in excel. So how do we use your above suggestion.

    Thanks

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