SYNC Sharepoint XLS not working

Question

good day,

we have a synchronized library from sharepoint online. When I open both xls and xlsx excel files, it opens in read-only mode. If I click edit in xlsx I can work with the document. If I open the xls I can't edit the document and it says "unable to connect to server". Downloading the file as always available offline doesn't work either - only saving the document to the computer desktop or converting it to xlsx will help, but that's annoying because there are thousands of documents. How to disable read-only first note display and how to make xls files work? I tried the protected view setting and the trusted location, the problem is global throughout the entire organization, I also tried deleting the cache and opening these documents on a new computer, for a new synchronization. It seems to be a problem only with Office 2016 and 2019, on Office 365 it seems to work. I have not tried office 2021, nor is it financially feasible to upgrade to a newer office for this feature.

Answer 1

Dear LosMartinos,

Good day! Thank you for coming back. 

Unfortunately, the above suggestions did not help you.

We kindly recommended you can raise a service request in Microsoft 365 admin center, which the support there has the related permission and resource to help you check from the backend.

Sincerely,

Tin| Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Thank you for Answer,

This didnt worked :/

Answer 3

Dear LosMartinos,

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

Thank you very much for the information.

Based on your information. I also found similar threads, you can try the suggestions in this thread to see if that can help you:Excel 2016 - We're Having Trouble Connecting to the Server, If - Microsoft Community

If the above suggestions are helpful to you, please also provide a screenshot of the version information.  (File - Account - version information)

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 4

Thank you for the reply, I tried resetting but it didn't help.

Here I attach the error message, "We are unable to connect to the server. If this problem persists, please contact technical support". Otherwise, I tried connecting outside the firewall without the company security rules and that didn't work either.

Answer 5

Dear LosMartinos,

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

 I noticed that you mentioned that workbooks in SharePoint can no longer be opened in the synchronization library. I've also noticed this happening in Office 2016 and Office 2019.

First of all, Office 2016 and Office 2019 are typically personal subscriptions that are activated by your personal account, while SharePoint Online is business subscriptions that are activated by your work account. So when you were using a personal subscription account, you didn't have access to the SharePoint document library directly. To test this hypothesis, I'd like to know if you can access the SharePoint document library on the web side and edit permissions by activating Office 2019. If you still can't, then this account doesn't have corresponding permissions.

If you do not experience this phenomenon on the web side and can edit normally, please try resetting OneDrive - Microsoft Support. Then resynchronize the document library to see the results.

If you still encounter this phenomenon, please also share the specific screenshot of the error message with us.

Sincerely,

Tin | Microsoft Community Moderator