Trying to connect message when Saving in Excel 365

Dear TAT2027,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

As per your description, please don’t worry, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

 It seems the problem is happened with Excel 365 app only with all users in your organization when users attempting to save the Excel document file. However, all other Office 365 applications work fine without any problem.

May I confirm where user is trying to save an Excel file? does users saving file to a network drive/ server location?

Also, please confirm does the users are able to save Excel file into Microsoft cloud service online location, e.g., OneDrive /SharePoint online.

In the meantime, to confirm whether this is a bug in a specific version, please provide us the version information. To check version: Open Excel>File>Account>Product Information and capture a full screenshot and share here and we will be tested on that version and verify the result with you.

Also, please upload a screenshot of your error message for your reference, so we can understand your exact scenario and provide our suggestion in a productive manner, perhaps some related screenshots will be helpful.

Mneawhile, please check in the ‘Workbook if there are any connections to an external source.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

***Note: In the event that you're unable to reply to this thread, please ensure that your Email address is verified in the Community Website by clicking on Your Account Name > "My Profile" > "Edit Profile" > Add your Email Address > tick "Receive email notifications" checkbox > click on "Save".***

We saw the same issue with the Current Channel, Version 2206 (Build 15330.20230). The issue occurs even when saving a new blank Excel document after selecting File, Save, Browse. The save location in our case is a redirected My Documents folder using a UNC Path. We tested against a Windows 2012 and Windows 2019 file server before reverting to an older Office version that did not have this issue.

Hi hughescjufl,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing.

 And I appreciate your kind words.

It seems this problem is occurred with latest updates version of Excel app even newly create file as well on file server location.

If this problem happened in new update version 2206 of Office, then as a workaround, could you please consider reverting to this version of Excel. About how to revert to an older version, please refer to How to revert to an earlier version of Office (microsoft.com)

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Best Regards

Waqas Muhammad

After posting my comment, I kept digging and discovered the issue is with DFS. Our default folder within the Excel Options for SAVE is

\InternalDomain\Data*department*\

If I change this value to a local drive such as C:\users*UserName*\Documents\ There is no sluggish response as long as I do everything local.

If I create an old fashion drive mapping such as N: to \ServerName*ShareName*\ There is no sluggish response.

Prior to my original post, I ran a full repair on my Office 365 software. My current build for Excel s:

The error message the users receive:

This message displays when the users select File, Save As, then click Browse if their default Save path is set to a DFS value.

If the user's default SAVE path in Excel Options is set for a local drive, this message displays when the user selects File, Open, then selects the DFS path.

Since we now know the problem is DFS related, our attention has turned to this area.

We are also looking into the suggestion of reverting back to an earlier release of Excel as suggested.

Update - we have learned that Excel Release:

Version 2206 (Build 15330.20230) Has the issue with DFS

Excel Release:

Version 2108 (Build 14326.21018)

Works without issue in the DFS environment.