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Hi,
since a few days I have issues with Excel 365. Above the grid it mentions "COULDN'T REFRESH DATA TYPES We need to fix your account. Select Microsoft Excel from the top menu > Sign Out. Then Sign back in with an account associated with a subscription." I have followed the instructions by signing out and then in again however it didn't resolve the issue and it repeats. I have been using Office 365 for many years and just recently the problem started. Now I can't refresh the data. I have checked my subscription and there seems nothing wrong with it and is all updated. Kindly assist me with this issue.
A family of Microsoft spreadsheet software with tools for analyzing, charting, and communicating data.
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.
Hi Michael,
The permanent fix is to install Office updates.
Use the Menu Bar and choose Help > Check for Updates to launch AutoUpdate app. Let it install updates and your issue will vanish.
Not that this is a permanent fix and MS needs to address it,,, but I found that accessing my excel via the web does show the data type, and I can even change it,,, it then when i access excel from my desktop, Office 365 recognized the changes... a headache but it works
Good news: they fixed it. Just relaunch Excel.
Can Microsoft please improve its hopefully automated QA workflows to include testing for this behaviour in Excel for Mac?
You raise a good point!
Microsoft provides Office for Mac users a huge array of options to catch bugs like this before they reach a general release build. The course of this problem shows the importance of at least some users taking advantage of the options offered by Microsoft.
Years ago, only Microsoft employees, a handful of large organizations, and Mac MVPs were offered opportunities to test pre-release software. Now, anyone with an unrestricted subscription can voluntarily test pre-release builds of Office for Mac.
There is a separate forum exclusively for beta channel users. If you look at that forum you will see that this problem was not discussed in the beta channel. It wasn't until the problem was discovered in the general release builds that it became a topic here in the regular Community forum.
If a problem doesn't get discovered during the beta releases, that presents a hurdle that is difficult for Microsoft to overcome. Microsoft Excel undergoes constant development. Different teams are working on various features and constructing interface elements. Think about the timing. General release builds are monthly. Beta channel builds are weekly.
The cycle time from discovery to action is hugely different. A new bug in a beta build can be caught in a matter of days and possibly fixed before ever making it to the general release. If the bug makes it to general release, the fastest possible turn around is 2 months if a problem can be fixed instantly. Longer for a complex problem like the data types issue which involved fixing server software.
It's clear to me that Microsoft needs more volunteers from the general community to step up and be beta tester guinea pigs. While beta testing is not for most people, there are organizations that would directly benefit by ensuring mission critical features are not adversely impacted, as the data type failure indicates.
Microsoft lets Mac users have a wide variety of testing options. There is the Current Channel Preview option, which lets you get the upcoming current channel a week earlier than everyone else. This would help a small IT department that could have one Mac test mission critical workbooks before releasing the update to everyone in the organization. Maybe a week of testing isn't enough. You could have that one test Mac install the Current Channel Preview and test for a whole month and week before installing the update. There's flexibility here.
Then there is the Beta Channel. This has weekly builds and lets organizations and brave individuals test new features as well as bug fixes. If some beta channel users had reported the data types problem, it might have never appeared in 16.65 and later builds. But the data types problem wasn't reported in the beta channel and the problem reached Current Channel.
Right now there are two major new features being tested in the beta channel: Power Query and the Javascript macro recorder. Feedback from beta channel testers are needed for these new features as well as to provide diligence to make sure existing features didn't get broken along the way.
The number of possible user scenarios is nearly endless. That's why it's important for a significant number actual users to be brave enough to try the beta channel builds and provide feedback to Microsoft both in the beta channel forum and using the built-in Help Menu > Feedback option, which sends metrics about beta channel builds directly to the development team.
For the reasons above I ask that those who could possibly run a Mac or two on the beta channel to please join the beta program. Here's instructions:
Great
Thanks