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Microsoft Excel 2021 Freezing - Microsoft told me to post here

Hello,


I have a macbook pro m1 14" and recently purchased Microsoft Excel 2021.


Excel freezes regularly on my macbook. If I click the 'Tools' menubar it will hang for 30 seconds+ showing the beachball. Additionally, even I try to copy a cell, or a variety of other tastes it will hang showing the beachball before eventually (after 30-60 seconds) letting me complete the task.


Word also has some freezing issues but not as badly as excel, which I need to use frequently.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software and it does not fix it.


However, based on a suggestions by Microsoft, I did login as a guest user and there were no freezes with excel so they suggested it was a problem with my user account and to seek apple community support for help.


So what is going on? I have removed login items and restarted but that is not the cause.


Does anyone have any other suggestions of software that may be causing the freezing?

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Aug 1, 2022 9:11 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 2, 2022 2:05 PM

Going along with my previous suggestion, if it works in Safe Mode, but doesn’t work when you restart normally, then it may be one of the system extensions you have installed causing the problem.

However, that problem would affect all users unless the particular System extension was not loaded for the other user.

12 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 2, 2022 2:05 PM in response to Barney-15E

Going along with my previous suggestion, if it works in Safe Mode, but doesn’t work when you restart normally, then it may be one of the system extensions you have installed causing the problem.

However, that problem would affect all users unless the particular System extension was not loaded for the other user.

Aug 2, 2022 1:17 PM in response to BarbedBuffalo

Yes I did delete the container files. The same issue still occurs.

I understand. I was just pointing out that it would have to be something. Being sandboxed, all of that should be contained, but with Microsoft, I don’t know.


A safe mode restart might clear some caches that could possibly fix the problem.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

While in safe mode, see if it works. It may be klunky, but not freeze up.

Restart normally after.

Aug 2, 2022 8:16 AM in response to BarbedBuffalo

Do you have the current release of Excel and Word (16.63.1)? Both are working fine for me on Monterey 12.5 on a 16-in MBP M1 Pro. Is the source of the documents you are attempting to open from Office on Windows, or documents exported from another non-Microsoft application?


Interesting Microsoft would send you here as they are responsibile for their applications working correctly on macOS.

Aug 2, 2022 11:03 AM in response to BarbedBuffalo

Microsoft answered a few questions and since it only freezing under my user profile and not a guest profile they told me it wasn't an issue with their program :/

If it is only their app freezing, then the problem is in their app, or the user-specific configuration files it creates—that’s why I suggested deleting the sandbox, to reset user config files.

Aug 2, 2022 4:18 PM in response to Barney-15E

Ok I have resolved it, thank you for your help.


I use the app Lulu to block network traffic so apps don't just call out constantly. After disabling it, excel worked.


So I investigated more. With Lulu enabled and Wifi disconnected, excel worked with no freezing. Turning on wifi instantly caused freezing again.


So I checked my rules in Lulu and I was blocking outgoing connections for excel. I edited this rule to allow outgoing connections in excel, which instantly caused the freezing to stop.


So it seems for some reason excel is constantly using the network connection. This is odd since I have the single license version of Office 2021, and not Office 365.


Thank you all for your help, it seems a poor programming on microsoft has caused this problem.

Microsoft Excel 2021 Freezing - Microsoft told me to post here

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