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Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action

Peter from Solver Support
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Summary:

Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action.

 

Symptoms:


User may run into the above error when attempting to utilize Report Designer; however, restarting Excel instance or even restarting machine does not resolve the issue.

NOTE: This is more so an error within Microsoft Excel and not a Report Designer issue. It would be best to review this with your IT as there may be certain settings within Excel that have been set by IT. Proceeding to the resolutions mentioned within this article should only be done so with the approval of your IT.

 

Cause: 

If Excel issues a communication request to another application (let’s say Word), it does it using the OLE object and then waits for the response from the application. If the response does not arrive in the default time threshold, Excel will trigger the following warning to the end user: ‘Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action’

Although the error message is always the same, there is actually a couple of fairly common scenarios that will trigger this particular error in Microsoft Excel:

  • With BI360 installed, embedding Excel into another Office product. When you embed Excel, it will attempt to load the BI360 addin but embedded Excel files do not support Addins. 
  • DDE Protocol is disabled from Excel – This issue might be occurring because the  Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) protocol is disabled from Excel’s settings.
  • Corrupted Office installation – Some affected users have reported that the issue was resolved after they reinstalled or repaired the entire Office installation.
  • Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker add-in is conflicting with Excel – There have been multiple reports of users that have been able to resolve the issue by disabling or uninstalling the PDFMaker plugin.
  • IE (Internet Explorer) process is interfering with the DDE – This is typically reported to occur when the user tries to save a file in Microsoft Excel. In this case, the solution is to close the process manually.

 

 

Resolution: 

There are a couple resolutions/steps

There are a couple resolutions/steps here. 

  1. If you are not on the latest version of BI360 (4.6.608+), we have addressed some of these issues in this version. This upgrade requires an update to all end users and should be coordinated with your IT. 
  2. It's possible that there are other Excel add-ins that are enabled and not compatible with the Report Designer add-in; disabling and/or uninstalling could possible remedy this issue.
    • Upgrade to BI360 4.6.608+ may address this issue as well.
  3. If that does not resolve, you may need to review Excel options as the issue might occur if Excel is setup to ignore any applications that try to communicate with Excel using the Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) protocol - you will want to uncheck this item if it is enabled:

Properties:

Applies To:

  • BI360 4x

 

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