Excel freezes for a few seconds before opening

Hi everyone,

We're in the process of rolling out Windows 11 (version 23H2) across our organization and have encountered an issue with Excel performance on some machines post-upgrade.

Several users are reporting that Excel freezes for a few seconds shortly after launching. This seems to have started following the upgrade to 23H2.

We use roaming profiles, and usually, rebuilding the user profile (starting fresh) appears to resolve the issue.

We're running Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Has anyone else experienced this problem or found a more consistent fix?

We are not using any add-ins but it works fine in safe mode

Hello @mleeming follow the given check, it might help you to resolve the issue -
1) Remove all VBA code via Developer tab> Visual Basic (also take backup before removing it).
2) Try starting Windows in Clean Boot mode to see if the problem is being caused by one of the startup items (programs that run automatically when your computer starts).

And if your issue still exists then switch to another Windows user profile.

Thanks for your reply. I had already tried the fixes you suggested. In the end, I discovered that the delay in Excel was being caused by our antivirus software, Trend Micro. For unknown reasons, it was interfering specifically with Excel following our Windows 11 upgrade.

This issue affected about 5–10% of our Windows 11 machines, and we’ve had to reinstall Trend Micro on those systems to resolve it. I'm still not sure why only Excel was impacted.