Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hello,

I have several Power Automate Desktop (PAD) flows for different data (Booking, Shipment, etc.). All of them follow the same pattern:

1- Launch Excel

2- Perform data transformation steps

3- Save and close Excel files

These flows ran completely fine for several months, but for the last two weeks, they consistently fail and cannot run successfully. The flows are triggered by Power Automate Cloud flows.

The error received is:

Call was rejected by callee. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80010001 (RPC_E_CALL_REJECTED))
Failed to open Excel document … (Active workbook retrieval error)

Observed behavior:

Excel appears in Task Manager → Background Processes and the error persists even after running taskkill /F /IM excel.exe.
Restarting the machine sometimes temporarily allows flows to run, but failures are intermittent.
Manually opening any Excel file on this machine sometimes shows the Document Recovery pane, even for blank files.
No .asd or AutoRecover files exist, and temp files were cleared.

Troubleshooting Steps Attempted (unsuccessful):

Ending Excel in Task Manager → temporary or no effect
Running taskkill /F /IM excel.exe in PAD flows before launch → flows still fail
Rebooting / shutdown / multiple restarts → intermittent success
Reinstalling Microsoft Office and Power Automate Desktop → did not resolve issue
Renaming or relocating Excel files and updating flows → still fails
Checking for Excel recovery files (.asd) and Unsaved Files → none found
Clearing Temp folder → did not resolve issue
Disabling all add-ins and startup files → issue persists
Testing Excel in Safe Mode (excel /safe) → still shows Document Recovery in some cases.

I have no further ideas on how to resolve this issue. Could you please assist me in identifying the root cause and providing a solution?

Thank you in advance!

BR, Samaneh

Categories:

Power Automate Desktop

Hi @SS-17031436-0,

The error isn’t coming from Power Automate Desktop (PAD). Excel is rejecting COM calls because it’s stuck in a corrupted state. The Document Recovery window and the background Excel processes indicate Excel is failing to initialize cleanly, so PAD can’t attach and throws RPC_E_CALL_REJECTED.

Try these steps (these usually fix it):

1.Reset the Excel user profile
Delete %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel and %localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel, then reboot.
This stops the Document Recovery loop.

2.Run a full Online Repair of Office
Unlicensed or partially corrupted installs are known to trigger this error.

3.Disable all Excel dialogs/popups
Protected View, add‑ins, privacy notices, any dialog blocks COM and causes this failure.

4.Enable “Nest under a new Excel process” in the Excel action
This avoids getting stuck with old background Excel processes.

5.Add a short delay or retry before Excel actions
Excel sometimes needs extra time to initialize before accepting COM calls.

There is also a known Office update that causes intermittent RPC failures due to hidden privacy dialogs. Rolling back or updating Office can also resolve it.

Ref:

Scripts that automate Excel fail with "Call was rejected by callee" error - Support - Arcana Development

https://www.tutorialpedia.org/blog/how-to-solve-exception-call-was-rejected-by-callee-exception-from-hresult-0x80010001-rpc-e-call-rejected-in-c/

excel - how to solve Exception:Call was rejected by callee. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80010001 (RPC_E_CALL_REJECTED)) in C#? - Stack Overflow

Errors when running desktop flows that include Excel actions - Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

Call was rejected by callee. (0x80010001 (RPC_E_CALL_REJECTED)) - Help / Activities - UiPath Community Forum

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