Excel Data Types Not Working

Question

Updated 12/19/2022

Data Types are currently not working as expected for all users of Microsoft Excel. The work-around I recommend is to revert to version 16.64.

If you are affected and haven't already done so, please take a moment to notify Microsoft that you are affected by this problem. The way to do it is to use the Menu Bar and choose Help > Feedback > I Don't Like Something. Microsoft uses the Squeaky Wheel method to prioritize bug fixes. The more reports, the higher up the priority list the bug gets. Please do this from the current update of Excel before reverting to 16.64.

To revert to version 16.64:

Use the Menu Bar and choose Help > Check for Updates to launch AutoUpdate

In AutoUpdate, set updates to Manual to prevent AutoUpdate from automatically updating after you revert to the older build.

In Finder, navigate to the Applications folder

Right-click on Microsoft Excel.app and choose Move to Trash

Restart your Mac

Empty the Mac OS Trash

Use this installer to install build 16.64 of Microsoft Excel: Excel

Some users may be able to find a work-around, which is why I am posting this discussion. Some users will be blocked from this due to licensing or IT department restrictions.

There are third-party solutions available. I don't know which ones are great and which ones are less good. I'm hoping people will try them out and reply here with their results and recommendations.

On the Insert tab of the Ribbon choose Add-ins > Get Add-ins.

In the resulting dialog enter the word Stock in the Search field then click the spyglass icon. There are a lot of add-ins available. Let's chat about them in this thread.

Answer 1

Hi All - Update: We have a fix for this issue. The fix is implemented within the M365 Service and will be deployed to the affected data-centers this week and should be completed by Thursday, 26-Jan-2023. Since this fix is in the service and not in the desktop application, the Data Types should just start working if you've been experiencing the issue. You may need to quit and restart Excel. If you've been waiting to upgrade Excel so that you could avoid the effects of this issue, you will be able to upgrade to the latest version of Excel once the fix is rolled out to the service.

Since it's a gradual deployment over the course of several days, there's no easy way to predict when it will take effect for any specific person, but the issue should be resolved for everyone once the deployment is finished in a few days from now.

Answer 2

Greatly look forward to this working again on Thursday. Thanks for this update Steve.

I would still ask that you monitor this thread. I will confirm if it works or not and provide details on any failure modes.

Answer 3

This is good news, Steve. I hope this is a complete, long-lasting (permanent?) solution to this problem. And I want to reiterate the request from ParadajzNAS for you to monitor this thread for updates from our side.

Having spent 3 months working with Tier 3 support last summer, with them focusing on the app side, please inform them that the solution is elsewhere. I am also a bit curious why we did not see the problem when accessing Excel online through a web browser. Wouldn't the base service be the same either way? Maybe not...

Looking forward to being done with this, and actually using the service again.

Thanks.

Answer 4

Keep in mind that the issue doesn’t happen on all Macs; it works fine on our Maxbook running the same OS and Excel version. As our iMac.

Answer 5

The reason that this issue did not affect Excel for the web or Excel for Windows is that the error occurred in a component of Excel for Mac as it communicated with the service. We were able to fix this by adjusting the response provided by the service so the component would no longer fail on Mac. The reason it did not affect all Macs is that the failing component was being gradually enabled starting with a small percentage of devices.