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D365 Business Central Online, "Edit in Excel" not working on a specific machine

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I'm encountering an issue with a specific user account on a specific machine. This is an online deployment.

When this user selects "Edit in Excel" from any page, the file successfully downloads in the browser (Chromium-based Edge) and successfully opens in Excel. When the Enable Editing button is selected in Excel, the add-in loads and appears to authenticate with the server. This goes on for a moment and the add-in displays the error "Failed to retrieve the server config" with no error code (it's displayed as " ").

I have been unable to replicate this error on any other machine or with any other user on this particular machine:

  • I can login to the add-in and Excel with another user's credentials and it works successfully on this machine (not a problem with the add-in?).
  • I can login to the add-in and Excel with this user on any other machine and it works successfully (not a permission or license error?).
  • All machines are Windows 10 and AAD connected.
  • I have run Fiddler with all "immersive" apps exempted and there are no 500 (or any other) errors.
  • The Server URL is https://exceladdinprovider.smb.dynamics.com but we have also tried our online tenant URL.
  • The Office upload cache has been cleared.
  • There are no firewall rules blocking relevant ports on either the client or network (I think Fiddler would have revealed this too...)

The only notable information I can find other than the error notification itself is that when the options dialog is opened for the failed user, it grabs an App correlation ID, but fails to populate any other items I would be used to seeing on a successful data connection (User agent, "Prefer", or Environment).

For an on-prem installation I would start looking at logs from the backend but I cannot find a way to do that with the online version...

I've pored through every relevant post for Business Central and NAV, both from Microsoft and third-parties, and I've come up with nothing helpful. I am incredibly grateful for whatever help anyone has!

Where would you look next? Thank you!!

  • Suggested answer
    Chris Bulson Profile Picture
    Chris Bulson on at
    RE: D365 Business Central Online, "Edit in Excel" not working on a specific machine

    Hello,

    I'm not sure what else this could be based on the description.  Just this user on just this machine is very odd.

    I'm assuming when you say you have other users sign into this machine and it works, you mean just in the Browser\Add-in, not signing into Windows with a different user.  The only other thing I can think of here is something specific to the user's windows profile on that machine.

    You're getting to the point where I would be considering resetting their windows profile on the machine.  I don't know what else would be specific to that machine and that user, unless there is some kind of weird Anti-Virus setup\profile thing going on.

    Feel free to open a support case if you'd like to jump on a stream and walk through it with someone.  Sometimes it just takes some fresh eyes.

    Thanks,

    Chris

  • TimothyFry Profile Picture
    TimothyFry 10 on at
    RE: D365 Business Central Online, "Edit in Excel" not working on a specific machine

    Beautiful answer Chris!

    I had no idea that the add-in was using IE! Very helpful information. Alas, even after clearing the cache and verifying that all of the IE security settings were set to default, it still did not work.

    The work/school account was something I addressed this morning. There was another work account associated with the machine, from a different domain, and I did remove it. After doing so I joined the client to the correct tenant and that is now the only work account on the machine.

    After restarting I still encountered the same:

    Annotation-2020_2D00_02_2D00_27-150021.png

    Those error details are not very helpful:

    Annotation-2020_2D00_02_2D00_27-150302.png

    I am grateful to you for your thoughtful answer Chris! Do you have any other ideas?

  • Chris Bulson Profile Picture
    Chris Bulson on at
    RE: D365 Business Central Online, "Edit in Excel" not working on a specific machine

    This sounds a bit odd.  You can only reproduce with this user on this machine.  Any other user on this machine works, and the problem user on any other machine works fine.
    The error that you're getting is a generic connection error.
    The Excel add-in loads in an IE frame, so you can try clearing IE cache, remembered passwords, etc... To see if that helps.

    There was a different error you could get if the machine had more than 1 Work\School account associated with window.
    Click the Start button, search for 'account'
    Open the 'Email & Accounts' window
    Click on the 'Access Work or School' section
    Is there more than 1 account listed here?  If there is, try removing the account that isn't the one they use for Business Central and then testing.  (You can add it back afterwards)
    This would usually result in a different error though if it was the problem.

    Thanks,
    Chris

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