Word 2010 with embedded Excel objects does not release Excel when closing.

Question

Office Professional Plus 2010

I have Word documents (.doc extension) that have embedded Excel objects.  Recently Word will not release the Excel instance when closing, which is creating OLE errors.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

More background.  I am using Office Pro Plus 2010 running on Win 7 Ultimate (if it makes any difference).  Same errors on another machine with Office 2007.

Insert -> Table -> Excel Spreadsheet

I have some VBA code in my default spreadsheet, but it only runs on demand.

Yes, it does terminate if run alone.

Answer 2

When you close the Word doc with the embedded Excel  it doesn't close the Excel instance, so Excel stays running in background in a hidden way. When you open that Word document again and you try to edit the embedded Excel you will get a message error because it is trying to run an additiona instance of Excel. So you need to go to your Task Administrator and close that Excel instance before. After this, Microsoft Word will let you edit that embedded Excel.

Answer 3

Ideally, Excel process should end when you close out Word.

Are you using VBA to embed the Excel sheet or is it through Insert>Object?

If you open Excel (without any OLE) and close it, does it terminate from process?

Answer 4

First, I found the cause of the OLE errors.  It was an add-in recently updated from PPC. (Practitioners Publishing Company).  The fix was to uninstall the program and reinstall, then delete the entire HKLU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0 key in the registry. 

First the OLE in Word said I did not have Excel installed.  After that, I kept getting a "Microsoft Excel is waiting for another OLE application to complete" error that would not go away until I killed the instance of Excel in task manager.

That being said, first open task manager.  Make sure no Word or Excel instances are running in processes.

Open a Word document.  The Winword.exe process appears.  Next, insert an Excel table into the Word document.  The Excel.exe process appears.  Close the table, then close the Word document.  The Word instance disappears, but the Excel instance does not.

I don't know if this is by design or a bug.

OldAuditor

Answer 5

What did you mean by “does not release Excel when closing”?

What are the OLE errors that you get?

Start Word in safe (Press Ctrl key while clicking on Word program) and see if it helps.

If Word works as expected, refer the link below to disable add-ins

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/view-manage-and-install-add-ins-in-office-programs-HA010354315.aspx?CTT=1#BM7