Excel (Office 365): Program works, but splash screen won't disappear

I agree with Jack on all fronts. This is a clear and simple bug flowing from a recent chance to the Excel 2016 load behaviour and, given the repro steps we've provided, it should be a quick fix if Excel dev team are given the repro steps.

There really is nothing more to it. It's not a Windows or driver bug, or anything to do with The Solver add-in or registry. These posts on this thread are just creating unnecessary noise.

Our CTO is an ex-member of the MS Excel Dev team in Seattle and has also looked at this issue and agrees with the above comments. The primary reason I jumped on this forum was to try to get the attention of the MS Excel engineers so they can fix this ASAP.

Thanks, M

Hello Thao (and anyone at Microsoft reading this),

I appreciate the new link, and did go out to view it, but the way the post reads, I should have already gotten that update through Windows Update (I am current when I check for updates).  I did look to see if there was any way to tell if I already had the update, but the only thing I found about a DisplayLink driver was for Office 2013, and the file listed for verification (dlumd32.dll) does not exist in either my System32 or SysWOW64 directories.  I also was not experiencing the specific issues cited in the post, and reading the DisplayLink web page, this appears to be a USB display driver, and I am using an ASUS widescreen display connected to an NVIDIA card.  Add Michael's experience trying the new driver, and I would rather wait for Microsoft to figure this out.  Michael's experience with this bug seems to parallel mine, unlike several other issues in this thread, so I'm not comfortable with introducing another change that may not be necessary.  If you can tell me how to determine if the driver I need has already been updated by Windows Update, please let me know.

Let me add a little more information to help any true troubleshooters who may read this.

1. The problem does not appear to be dependent on the file extension.  I get the same issue with an xls, xlsx, or xlsm file.
2. If I launch Excel to create a new file, then minimize the display prior to doing anything else, the splash screen is there - before Excel knows what type of file it will be.  However, if you perform a "Save as", the splash screen will go away because any secondary dialog in Excel clears the splash screen as I have documented in an earlier post.  This is really just a confirmation of my first point that the extension is not the factor.
3. I noticed that if I launch a file which was created by an earlier version of Excel, I do not experience the problem.  This is the case for earlier version files with or without formulae to be recalculated.  This tells me that something in the "previous version check" code is either bypassing the problem code or ensuring a proper branch is taken down the road.

I hope someone is reading this who can actually get it to a diagnostician.  Michael and I have made significant efforts to provide details of the issue and have tested numerous attempts to isolate the problem.  Thanks to all who are trying to help.

Jack

Hello AnalogJack.

I totally understand your concern.  I apologize for not providing an official link.  Here is the link: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2016-word/fixed-11516-excel-word-or-outlook-problems-caused/6305c25e-b855-4621-8936-978f0d5dec91

We are currently looking at the issue to determine the cause.  I will update this thread when a fix has been found.  In the meantime, the /e switch is only a temporary solution to work around the issue.

Thanks

Thao

Excel Desktop

Prince, as I said, I do not have that registry entry, and yes, I was in the registry, not Windows Explorer.

Sorry for the small size of the second screenshot.