Why does Microsoft Excel generate the message "Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action." when I am running matlab function that reads from an excel sheet?

I am running a matlab script that read data from excel and that runs fine. However, if I now open an excel sheet outside, I am not able to use it, as I get this error "Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action." Any advice on how to solve this please?

[Guillaume]

Have you got any excel add-on installed by any chance? Or macros that are set to run whenever an excel file is opened?

[OCDER]

Hi, I deleted my answer as it wasn't the right one. Seems like you can modify the same workbook via matlab and excel via actxserver.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/using-a-matlab-application-as-an-automation-client.html

How are you accessing the excel sheets via matlab? This could be more of a Excel issue, so do any of these solution help?

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/excel-is-waiting-for-another-application

I copied your comments that could help others figure this issue out:

@Poornima said: "However, this happens even if I open other Excel files (ones that are not used by Matlab)."

Answer 1

[Poornima Kumar]

@Guillaume - Thanks for your email. I do not have any add-ons installed.

@OCDER - I checked OLE option as recommended by microsoft. However, this doesn't solve the issue. In fact now, I cannot double click on the excel file to open, it only opens excel and I have to manually select the file from the menu. This is also the issue with my latest matlab download 2018a, wonder if this is the version issue. I will keep playing with it. If you have any other suggestions, it will be great!