Hi guys.
I think I've found the solution that actually works:
- Open new file (empty one) in Excel.
- Go to the Home and press Recent files.
- Press right click of the mouse and choose to remove all the files that you've ever opened with the same name of the file you're just trying to open. Don't use the search option as it opens the file instead of just searching and marking it. You need to look for the file that was open for every single day you could have had it open.
- After you make you ALL of the previous files are removed open new file again.
- Instead of normally closing the file open Task Manager and End Task for Microsoft Excel.
- Try to open your destination file. If the problem persists keep repeating no. 3,4 and 5 until your destination file will eventually open.
Explanation:
If you open the file on your computer Excel automatically saves the recent version of this file recalculated at the moment you just opened it. This helps the Excel to open the file quicker next time as it just recalculates differences between the file you open in a new version and old version. Problem starts when different person edits the same file and they have saved different shortcut to yours. Most of the time file is updating itself without any issue, but the larger the file is the more probability of failure, hence we start to see that OLE error, basically Excel tells us that
"File name doesn't match it's content as there is another file with same name you have opened, but the data in it is different".
The error occurs when internet is too weak (in my office it is often) or when SharePoint/One Drive have small downtime. These two things cause that the file is not uploaded fast enough to update new changes, so the error occurs as the system thinks you opened two different files with the same name at the same time.
It could be solved very easy by Microsoft, but they have never read or listened my advice in this matter, so I'm not bothered writing it down again.
The point with shutting down Excel using Task Manager is to discard any sort of reference to the old file that had ever existed as a temporary file. If you close down the software there are sometimes processes that still work in the background for some time due to the several reasons (safety is one of them in many cases). Therefore shutting down the software with Task Manager stops these processes, so the file has a "clear" path to open itself as "something new" for the Excel.
I hope this will help someone and Microsoft will finally solve this issue, but I doubt.
All the best!
Marek