Unable to process the request when opening an Excel document in SharePoint 2010

44 Replies

One of our customers recently contacted us with a very annoying issue opening Excel files from SharePoint 2010 document libraries. Upon arriving to review their installation we discovered the following odd behaviors:

Clicking on a document library link to an Excel document resulted in the following error:

Unable to process the request.
Wait a few minutes and try performing this operation again.

Oh joy, very helpful indeed

When right clicking and saving the document, SharePoint served up the document as a Xlviewer / HTML document type. Even more helpful… not!

What ever happened to the good old days of the “Open Document” dialog “How would you like to open this document?”

The Solution

EDIT: Updated solution post service pack 1
(What!!!, you don’t have SP1 installed yet?? checkout this link for details)

Navigate: Site Actions –> Site Settings
Click the Site Collections Features link located under the Site Collection Administration section of the page
Locate and active the Open Documents in Client Applications by Default

NOTE: This does not always resolve the issue, even with SP1 installed. We have yet to determine a consistent root cause. If the solution steps above do not resolve the issue, continue on to our original solution below (or reinstall SharePoint… whichever works best for you)

Original Solution
The problem was traced to SharePoint’s built-in URL redirection for various files types. Behind the scenes, SharePoint was attempting to redirect the Excel file to a common viewer component. We just needed to turn this redirection off.

Edit the serverfilesExcelServer.xml file at the following location:
[Program Files]Common FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions14TEMPLATEXML

Comment out any lines with the file extension of xlsx or xls

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<!– Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. –>

<ServerFiles>
    <!–<Mapping FileExtension="xlsx" RedirectUrlTemplate="/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?id=|0" NoGetRedirect="TRUE" CreateRedirectUrlTemplate="/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?new=1"/> –>
    <Mapping FileExtension="xlsb" RedirectUrlTemplate="/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?id=|0" NoGetRedirect="TRUE" CreateRedirectUrlTemplate="/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?new=1"/>
    <Mapping FileExtension="xlsm" RedirectUrlTemplate="/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?id=|0" NoGetRedirect="TRUE" CreateRedirectUrlTemplate="/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?new=1"/>
</ServerFiles>

Perform an IISRESET and you will now be presented with the tried and true standard “Open Document” dialog

44 thoughts on “Unable to process the request when opening an Excel document in SharePoint 2010”

Marcin November 30, 2010 at 2:04 am

Thanks, very much for this solution
Richard April 20, 2011 at 2:38 am

Thank you, this problem was driving me mad!
Tyler May 5, 2011 at 1:06 pm

Thanks a ton for this! Works like a charm.
Dan May 12, 2011 at 7:20 pm

Did you activate the Site Collection Feature “OpenInClient”?
The default behaviour of SharePoint is to open Office documents in the Office Web App’s (even if they’re not installed – I know, pretty smart!!).
At the Site Collection Administration page, go to the Features, and Activate “Open in Client Application”

This will fix it as well (and may be safer than mod’ing xml files..)

D
ArmgaSys May 13, 2011 at 10:56 am

First thing we checked! We have found that OpenInClient does not always solve the redirect problem, hence the mod’ing of XML to correct.
San July 30, 2011 at 8:54 pm

Thank U Very Much… Its worked in a single shot…!!!
Amardeep Rana August 2, 2011 at 7:44 am

Thank You Very Much
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Gabriele September 28, 2011 at 6:38 am

it’s works!!!
thanx
Zaur October 9, 2011 at 11:04 pm

super !! thanks !!
Srinivas October 23, 2011 at 12:47 am

Thanks a ton. Worked like a charm.
Msbuzzz October 30, 2011 at 11:32 pm

Thank you for this detail information. However I want the other way around!!

Our site requirement is to display the Excel sheet in site itself, instead of downloading it into the client system (For security reason). Please do you have any Idea how can I make it display in site itself and how to get rid of this error!!
We are using Excel web access webpart!!

Thank you!!
ArmgaSys October 31, 2011 at 2:10 pm

Unfortunately, the Excel Service and Excel Web Access service are more difficult to troubleshoot than the issue we have documented in this blog post as there are many installation specific configuration settings which can impact operation of the Excel Service.
Our initial recommendation would be to uninstall the Excel Web server (especially if it was installed by the initial SharePoint configuration wizard) and reinstall / reconfigure the service.
Also, verify the following:
1. The service accounts are correctly configured
2. The Secure Store Service is correctly configured and operational
3. There are no obvious errors being reported in the SharePoint logs
subha shini November 8, 2011 at 4:54 am

hi all,

unfortunetly…i followed the steps but went in vain….
again my pager is throwing the same error..
any help plz..

regards,
subha
ArmgaSys November 9, 2011 at 10:23 am

Subha,

Troubleshooting Excel Service issues via a blog post can be very challenging. We recommend closely verifying the following:

1. The service accounts are correctly configured
2. The Secure Store Service is correctly configured and operational
3. There are no obvious errors being reported in the SharePoint logs

If you still are still having issues, we do offer troubleshooting and support services. Our contact details are located at this link
Sunit Mathur January 23, 2012 at 7:17 am

Good stuff..saved me a struggle.

Thank you.
rr March 9, 2012 at 6:15 pm

Just a note of thanks.

I rebuilt our sharepoint server and the original build did not have this problem.

Running RTM without Sp1 at the moment and the xml file edit worked.

thx
RR
Usman April 26, 2012 at 2:57 am

Thanks for a quick fix about “Unable to process the request”
Bharathi May 7, 2012 at 9:35 am

It worked for me.

Thanks a lot.
Biju June 28, 2012 at 10:39 pm

Updated solution worked for me.
Marilyn August 6, 2012 at 3:15 am

Thank you,

Ditto…!
Jorge Costa September 6, 2012 at 6:10 am

Thanks a lot!!!
Andy December 7, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Thank you so much!
vj January 10, 2013 at 3:00 am

Hi,
I am unable to edit
[Program Files]Common FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions14TEMPLATEXMLserverfilesExcelServer.xml. This is a read only file
Christie February 18, 2013 at 10:40 am

THANK YOU! 🙂 Funny, the first solution, activating the Open Documents in Client Applications by Default, worked immediately so that Excel files opened for ME, but still not for the users. It was a great stress killer though, because now I knew that SharePoint wasn’t totally messed up. 🙂 I restarted Excel Calculation Services on the server and the user still couldn’t get in. Finally I rebooted the whole SharePoint web server and everything works fine now. Just wanted to throw that out there before people start editing xml files if the first solution doesn’t work completely.
Abdoul February 21, 2013 at 8:05 am

Thanks! “The Solution” worked perfect. Converting .xls documents to PDF was my work around prior to stumbling on this solution.
John April 10, 2013 at 10:49 am

Thank you!
Yunus May 28, 2013 at 6:17 am

thank you.
shadi June 13, 2013 at 11:18 am

Thanks a lot, it is resolved my issue
Matthew Carter July 29, 2013 at 1:56 pm

I did an IISReset and it worked for me – error went away and users were able to use Office Web Apps – Excel. I am SharePoint 2010 SP1 Enterprise Edition June 2013 CU
Abbey October 25, 2013 at 2:36 pm

Great! Resolved my problem. I didn’t need an IISReset.
rajiv November 13, 2013 at 5:24 am

Great work . thanks a lot
Sim Citi November 15, 2013 at 12:36 pm

SharePoint worked fine then we upgraded from server 2008R2 sharepoint2010 SP1 to Server 2012 sharepoint 2010 SP2 . Then it broke . Your solution Fixed it Again. Thanks So much
Jimbo April 14, 2014 at 2:43 pm

Just as point of reference – this only started happening for me (SP 2010 on Server 2008 R2) after the latest round of patches (04/9/2014):
English hyphenation package (should not be any big deal – should not affect Excel docs from client)
English spelling package (should not be any big deal – should not affect Excel docs from client)
IE 11 (should not be any big deal – should not affect Excel docs from client)
KB2670838
KB2729094
KB2834140
KB2836943
KB2862330
KB2862973
KB2882822
KB2888049
KB2898857
KB2901112
KB2911501
KB2916036
KB2922229
KB2929733
KB2930275

So… that’s just when it started happening. To me, that says it was a Microsoft update.
If I remove those patches and reboot, then check Excel services, maybe that proves the point.

Either way, this type of thing should NOT start “magically” happening, for unknown reasons, and users (system managers) should not be required to go in and make “tweaks” due to whatever “magical change” Microsoft inadvertently caused to happen via one of their patches.

Thoughts?
Jimbo April 14, 2014 at 5:58 pm

Update: I did IISRESET and all is well – no changes to any XML or any registry tweaks, fyi. Definitely sounds like a bug from those above-mentioned patches.
ArmgaSys Post authorApril 15, 2014 at 4:03 pm

We agree! Issues should never magically happen and tweaks should be unnecessary.
However, as products become ever more “enterprisie” (designed for small to very large environments), broken deployments are going to happen and tweaks will be needed.
It isn’t optimal… and it can be a huge pain in the rear… but we see it as the reality of ever more complex systems compounded by the theory of leaky abstractions.
And these complexity problems aren’t just constrained to Microsoft products 
Manish Oswal February 14, 2015 at 1:04 pm

Thanks a lot. Works like charm
Neelambhari Chandrasekaran May 29, 2015 at 7:22 am

Resolved my problem. Thanks a lot!
pittu venkat June 8, 2015 at 8:27 am

Excellent issue got resolved , thank you so much 🙂
Carter Bonez December 11, 2015 at 5:43 am

Absolutely marvelous, had to use the Original Solution but thank goodness finally got rid of the error. Thanks for posting! CB
Nancy Forbes January 18, 2016 at 11:04 pm

Another thing to check is managed Add-ons in IE. There are 3 SharePoint Add-ons that should appear. Specifically the SharePoint OpenDocuments Class is needed. If you don’t see these then do a repair of your Office Installation.
Khalid Widaa March 27, 2016 at 8:33 am

it worked, but for some users it didn’t work even though I updated the browser, silverlight and flash player
it’s still not working.
Please help
Diezvai April 7, 2016 at 10:46 am

Thank you!
Tamu Taylor February 22, 2018 at 9:21 pm

Thank you so much!