REFRESH RECOMMENDED Will Not Go Away in Excel Office 365

Question

Hi, I have a particular excel file in SharePoint that keeps giving me the REFRESH RECOMMENDED error when I open the file in desktop app. Discard changes doesn't do anything as the problem keeps coming back after I reload the file. I tried to make some changes on the browser and the changes are not there when I attempt to open the file again in desktop app. I have no issue with other files in the same folder and there is no one else accessing the file. How do I solve this problem?

Answer 1

• I don't have any cables long enough now so I can't test this one.
• I was accessing the file using the web app as well and no one else was editing the file.
• I downloaded a copy, renamed it, and reuploaded the file. Everything works fine now when I open the new file using the desktop app.
• Restoring an older version works as well.

There's a new issue now: the web excel app will freeze whenever I try to edit some of the existing formulas in either the old file or the new file. I'll open a new thread for this one.

Answer 2

The error message:

The file is on SharePoint and multiple users are able to edit the file. I don't have any issue with the file previously even when there are 2-3 users editing the file. No one else is accessing the file when the error first appeared today. The file doesn't have any connections.

Excel stuck at uploading whenever I close the file.

Old answers recommend to clear the cache in Office Upload Center but I don't have Office Upload Center on my PC.

Answer 3

Hi QM Chan,

Thank you for giving us the screenshot of the error. It provides more information for our troubleshooting.  This error happens when a newer version of the file is on the server, and you don't have any local changes, and you are unable to update the document automatically.

Our suggestion would be the following:  

• To change the network, for example if you are using wireless, you can try using internet cable and see if it can resolve the problem.
• Most importantly, other people may have been editing the Excel for web version when you were working on the Excel for the Desktop. Therefore, Open Excel for Web and try to visualize changes they have made on the Excel for Web document located in SharePoint you can’t see on your Excel for desktop. This will allow us to know if there have been changes on Excel for Web that did not sync on your Excel for Desktop.
• Download this specific Excel workbook to your local PC and delete it from SharePoint, after that, upload it again. See if the refresh error will stop prompting in this way.
• As you mentioned, this  issue start recently and the workbook was fine before, in that case, if the above method does not work, could you try use the version history function to retrieve this workbook to the time period when it still works.

Note: backup your recent changes in this workbooks first. Otherwise, it might cause data loss issues.

View the version history of an item or file in a list or library

Regards,
Christophe

Answer 4

REFRESH RECOMMENDED warning can have a couple of causes.

We need the full text of the error message to decipher the specific cause of the message.

One is the file is located in OneDrive/SharePoint and multiple people are editing it, "co-authoring".

Another refers to external files "connected" to the workbook, that you are importing data from.

Are you using PowerQuery to import data? https://www.contextures.com/excelpivottablerefresh.html .

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot-common-coauthoring-errors-f0a0be0c-c03f-45b2-bec0-535e5b13f691 .

Use this tip to see if you have a "connection" to another data source: https://www.dummies.com/software/microsoft-office/excel/manually-editing-data-connections-excel/