Excel.exe process stays active in task manager after closing

Excel.exe process stays active in task manager even when I close all workbooks. Then, the next time I open new Excel, there's new process added in the task manager and every time it takes more and more time to run Excel, because every time there's another one process added. Does someone have any clues how to solve this? A simple open the workbook, do nothing except close and save will leave a process hanging.

Thank you for your answer. No add-ins, xlstart etc. But I do have a lot of vba code and I am running mail-merge from excel using the VBA code. It is not unusual to end up with 3 excels and a couple of words in the Task Manager with none of them active. I use Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. I currently start excel with a bat file that kills the 'hanging' Excels and Words and then starts my excel program which solves the problem, but I would rather clean it up and have excel and word exit properly. Any suggested solutions will be appreciated.

This is my first time so I hope I have posted the code correctly. Thank you for taking a closer look.

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