When I close an Excel file, sometimes it locks up Excel and I have to kill the application

Question

Recently, when I close an Excel file (not always; it seems random), Excel gets hung up and the window saying it is closing the file just stays on the screen and I cannot do anything in Excel at that point. I have left it this way overnight to see if it will clear up, but it does not.

It just happened again with a very small file that had one character in column A and had 32 rows.

I cannot just "X" out of Excel in these situations. I have to go to Task Manager and end the application.

The problem is that the other files that I had open are not saved (via autorecovery), even though I have the 'autorecovery' time set to 2 minutes.

Is anyone else seeing this behavior? The files I see this behavior with are on my C:\ drive, OneDrive, or SharePoint.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi @KKB

Are these shared collaborative workbooks that occur with this issue?

Could you please check the version name and version number? This information is under "Product Information", you may open Excel, click "File" > "Account".

• If it is Microsoft 365 Apps, I suggest you click: Options > Save, uncheck "AutoSave files stored in the Cloud by default in Excel".

Then sign out your account from Excel, then close it.

Click Start > Control Panel > User Accounts > Credential Manager> In the Windows Credentials section, remove all stored credentials referencing the OneDrive and Microsoft Office.

• Note: Under Generic Credentials, look for any entries containing “OneDrive Cached Credentials” and MicrosoftOffice16 and MicrosoftOffice15 credentials and Remove all.

Open Excel, re-sign in your account.

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