Excel 2016 (Protected Mode) Crashing When Opening Files From Email

Anonymous
2015-09-29T23:14:57+00:00

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

  • Receive an Excel file in email (both GMail and (desktop) Outlook 2016 (using a live.com account, not a GMail one) have been tested);
  • Double click on it to open it. (Excel 2016 is already open);
  • The file opens in Excel with that irritating little "Oooooh, very dangerous! Could be scary monsters inside!" message which, I'll admit, is potentially useful for files from outside the organisation which is the only reason that I leave it on. Of course, there's no point if it doesn't actually work.

Then one of two things happens. Either

  • You go to click the Enable Editing button and Excel completely hangs on you; or
  • You get the "Excel (Protected Mode) {breathless pause...} Has! Stopped! Working! Pretending to check for a solution that has never once been found in my lifetime, please waste your time waiting" dialog.

There is nothing wrong with the file itself. I have tried with two different files, both have a problem. In both cases if instead of opening them from the Email application I save them to a trusted location I can open them without problem. But opening them directly from either browser or Outlook completely crashes Excel 2016 in a way that it didn't with Excel 2010.

Anyone else?

PS: If anyone from Microsoft responds to this post, looking into this specific question, I'll be more than happy to listen. If instead they copy and paste a script about restarting Windows in Safe Mode I may just need to throw a shoe at something.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2015-11-10T23:39:54+00:00

I just heard back from a displaylink tech support person.  Apparently they are aware of the issue.  He had me do a work around that has fixed the issue for me.

  1. Open a blank excel document.
  2. Go to file

3.  Go to options

  1. Go to advanced
  2. Under Display
  3. Check the box...Disable graphics hardware acceleration.

7.  Click apply.

This has fixed my issue until there is a driver update.

Thanks...Matt

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Anonymous
2016-02-24T04:16:51+00:00

Updated to displaylink driver 7.9m5 dated 2/23/2016 and problem was resolved for me.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-03-19T19:59:53+00:00

    (On the issue of Microsoft's refusal to fix issues like these, even if some obscure third party driver was the sole and exclusive cause of this which it isn't, how on earth did the Office team write the code so badly that it could be blown up by that (or even by hardware graphics acceleration come to that) anyway? And even more importantly... what, if anything, is Microsoft doing about it, right now?)

    I'm betting that the post that I replied to was intended to be "Marked! As! Answer!. It must have been disappointing that I didn't do that.

    I'd say that it's disappointing that 3 weeks later there is sill no response to that last question, except that it's more "that's the way Microsoft rolls these days" than unexpected.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-03-18T17:22:04+00:00

    Worked like a charm! :-)

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-03-11T21:43:03+00:00

    I was able to work around it, while in Excel:

    File

    Options

    Trust Center

    Trust Center Settings

    Trusted Locations

    Add a new location 

    Then for my particular case I added the download folder to stop Excel from opening the file from that folder in protected mode.  

    I tried disabling the graphics acceleration to no avail.  

    I imagine that completely disabling  protected view would also be another work around but I have not tested it and I wasn't sure that I wanted to have it completely open like that.   

    What a great 'feature'  Microsoft.  How about making it work?

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