Unable to edit shared Excel files on SharePoint

Question

Dear Community,

Beginning from Tuesday (27th September) my organisation have problems with Sharepoint’s Excels. Three out of hundreds online files are some-kinds corrupted.  When trying to write/edit something into cell we receive this information:

„There was a problem executing your request.

Please try again in a few minutes.”

Those files used to work correctly, size is between 300-4000 KB so nothing outstanding.

We have tried to re-upload them to Sharepoint with deleted columns and rows from tables (to make size even smaller). Hoever all actions ended with the same result.

It is worth to mention that one of those file seems to be stuck on „Loading…” stage with long green bar which never goes away (in the right bottom corner).

Any ideas how to solve those issues would be much appreciated.

Regards

Answer 1

Dear Michael_gatee,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

I carefully went through your question and it seems you have some shared specific Excel files stored in SharePoint, when you try to edit those files, you get an error message. Don't worry. We can work together and solve this problem.

Now, could you please provide the information below, so that we can clearly get the idea about the genesis of this scenario, and then share appropriate suggestions:

1. May I Know where this issue is happening? Are you trying to edit them via Excel for web? or Opening in desktop app? does the issue happen when you open these files in either ways?

1. Do the saved local copies edit fine?
2. Does this issue happen to all users trying to access these files or specific users?
3. Have you tried to access them using a different browser to see if it is the same case?
4. You mentioned that you tried to re-upload them but the result is the same. What if you try to copy the content to brand new workbooks, rename those workbooks, then upload them. The same behavior?

Kindly understand that the initial reply may not instantly solve issues, but we can work together to come to a conclusion.

Thanks for your kind understanding and cooperation. We look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,   

Edwine | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Hi Edwine,

Thank you for your response!

Please see below answer for your questions:

1.May I Know where this issue is happening? Are you trying to edit them via Excel for web? or Opening in desktop app? does the issue happen when you open these files in either ways?

 It is happening when we are tryin to edit them via Excel for web. In desktop app it is working for 2 files, for 3rd file (one that cannot fully load) it does not work. User can write information to a cell, but others cannot see this.

2. Do the saved local copies edit fine?

All files saved on local hardware work fine, without any issues.

3. Does this issue happen to all users trying to access these files or specific users?

It is affecting all users.

4. Have you tried to access them using a different browser to see if it is the same case?

I have tried using different browser and the final outcome is the same.

5. You mentioned that you tried to re-upload them but the result is the same. What if you try to copy the content to brand new workbooks, rename those workbooks, then upload them. The same behavior?

So, for the smallest file I have tried to select all sheets and copy to new Excel file (using move or copy method), rename and upload one againt to SharePoint. Such approach did not work, still the same problems occured. However when I copied sheet content and pasted it to newly created Excel sheet and do the same approach for each sheet, it worked.

As I mentioned above I had done it for the smallest file, performing such process for the largest file would be time consuming and at the end of the day there is no guarantee it would be working.

Do you have any idea why files are crushing this way? I would like to know to prevent such events happening in the future. The only common denominator is the date on which this problem occurred.

Thank you so far for your help. It is much appreciated. For any additional questions do not hesitate to write a message, I will do my best to answer as soon as possible.

Regards

Answer 3

Hi Edwine,

Quick update regarding to point No 5.

The new Excel file which was created by manually copying content for each sheet stopped working showing the same error message :

„There was a problem executing your request.

Please try again in a few minutes.”

Regards

Answer 4

Hi Michael_gatee,

Thanks for posting back with the requested information in details. Let us continue troubleshooting together.

In your first reply you made a statement "Beginning from Tuesday (27th September) my organization have problems with Share point's Excels", does this mean that you were able to edit these documents before? could it be possible that someone added Excel for web unsupported features using desktop app? There are some features that are not supported in Excel for web, and if those features have been added to the Workbook, it may cause issues with editing this file in the browser.

Now that you mentioned that the local saved copies work fine, I suspect these files might be containing unsupported features, that could have been added from Excel for Desktop app. Kindly go through this article thoroughly, and see if those problematic files include unsupported features. See this article for your reference: Edit a workbook that contains features unsupported by Excel for the web (microsoft.com).

Also, for the two files that work fine in desktop, please try to use the option of Open in app, this will help us in case the workbooks contain unsupported feature for Excel for web:

You also mentioned " for 3rd file (one that cannot fully load) it does not work. User can write information to a cell, but others cannot see this"

This makes me think that may be the user is trying to edit this file when Autosave feature is turned off or they are using the old version of Excel which does not support co-authoring! Please check this article and make sure this is not the case: Collaborate on Excel workbooks at the same time with co-authoring (microsoft.com).

Thank you for your kind understanding, cooperation and patience. I hope we find a solution to this issue! Please feel free to update us.

Sincerely,   

Edwine | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 5

Hi Edwine,

Hope you are doing well!

I have read through sent documentation and I can confirm that we did not used any of unsupported features. Before 27th September everything had been working correctly.

Regarding to the 3rd file, autosave feature is turned on and we are not using old version of Excel. I thing it might be something with loading. As mentioned earlier this file cannot fully load, in the right bottom corner is green bar which does not disappear.

The file seems to be fully load, all sheets and cells are loaded, but we cannot open in with desktop app and edit. It is showing that the latest version is from 23rd August (on server is most actual version, edited in September).

We have tried to use this refresh option with no results. Every time it shows that the last modification date is 23rd August.

Thank you for your time spent for it!

Best regards

Michael