Yet another issue discovered in the most recent OS update

Jun 12, 2018 05:38 GMT  ·  By

On the verge of Microsoft rolling out new cumulative updates for Windows 10 with both security and non-security improvements, a new issue hitting the April 2018 Update is making the rounds on the company’s Community forums.

This time, the culprit appears to be a software compatibility issue that causes Microsoft Excel to freeze and then enter document recovery mode all of a sudden when users try to input a formula.

The bug only affects old versions of Microsoft Excel including Excel 2002, which were previously running completely flawlessly on Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Several users have confirmed in messages posted on the Community forums that there’s a problem with old Excel versions, though for the time being, Microsoft is yet to acknowledge the bug. Rolling back to the previous Windows 10 version appears to fix the issue, and this is the living proof that everything’s being caused by a software compatibility issue happening after the upgrade to April 2018 Update.

Users moving to Office alternatives

Needless to say, Microsoft Excel not running as expected post-upgrade and many users not willing to downgrade to the previous Windows 10 version has pushed some to alternative products like LibreOffice.

“I am also having the same issue. I have worked for hours trying to resolve without success. I have finally given in and downloaded LibreOffice. I would much prefer to use Excel so if you figure this out please post and I eagerly await a solution. You should also consider google sheets which I like, but for me I have a few sheets that I keep encrypted that I do not want on the cloud,” one user explained.

“I have seen no rhyme or reason as to when this crashes. Some worksheets work fine and other do not, but there is consistency in which sheets work over and over and those that don't. Not sure if that helps at all.”

It remains to be seen if this month’s Patch Tuesday rollout includes fixes for this problem, as the updates will go live for Windows 10 users in just a few hours.