Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action

Environment: Virtual Machine
OS: Windows 7 Ent 32 bit
Excel: 2010
Excel Worksheet Type: .xls and xlsx


Hello, hope all is well. I am getting the following error/message (see attached) when opening a simple Excel Worksheet file one in .xlx and one in xlsx; just to make sure Excel 2010 can open these two types; there is nothing in the worksheets but simple text nothing pasted no formulas. I am attempting to open the worksheet file by clicking the Excel Worksheet file itself. It hangs for a 5 to 10 secs then the error/message pops up then I acknowledge the message by clicking Ok, then it hangs for another 5-10 secs and then it comes again. This happens 3 times then Excel opens with out opening the Test worksheet; so I go to file>Open>(Open Worksheet).

Has anyone experience this before; is there a way to view this process from beginning to end to see where the error is or what is causing the issue? Could it be an Add-in?

Thank you for responding; it was already unchecked. I tested it again today and the error/message did not appear. I am trying to recreate the error/message again. I was getting this error Wed-Fri last week. I remember those two threads when I was troubleshooting last week. My next step is to check the EventViewer (Microsoft Office Alerts), Task Manager (Processes and Applications, (SmartInk (Add-ins), then uninstall and reinstall MS Office and keep researching.

If you find something else please share. I will update this thread as soon as I can.