There was a problem connecting to the server "Windows 10" (when opening Office files on Mac)

[GaryJ5]

I'm stumped. I've used Parallels on my Mac for years without any major issue, but something new has popped up that I can't figure out. I have a 2017 Mac running current version of Mojave and am running Parallels/Windows 10, which I keep updated. Windows is primarily used only for Quicken. I use the latest version of "Office for Mac" on the Mac side.

A couple weeks ago, I started getting this error message when opening any Office files (Excel, Word, etc) - "There was a problem connecting to the server 'Windows 10'. The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again." I get this error message whether or not I have Parallels/Windows 10 running at the time or not.



Does anyone have an idea as to what may be happening, or where to look for clues?

Thank you,
Kipa

 

[Maria@Parallels]

@GaryJ5 please let us know when the issue appears at the first time, maybe after update? Also could you generate the tech.report and post the report's ID here.

 

[GaryJ5]

SOLVED IT! Boy, was this frustrating, but finally solved it. In my Office for Mac programs, in the "recent files" section, there was a bad link to an Office file that it thought was saved in the virtual machine. We don't typically save our Office documents in the virtual machine, so not sure how it was created. The path itself made no sense, so the error was thrown regardless of whether the VM was open or not. Apparently, when Office is first opened, it "pings" all the files in the "recent files" section, perhaps to later speed up opening the file. As the path itself was bad, it didn't matter if the VM was open. Deleting this bad link/path solved the issue.

 

[PatrickH15]

This seems to be a recent occurrence for me as well @GaryJ5 (After updating to the newest version of Parallels). What seems to have fixed the issue is clearing 'recent files' in your Office tools. I cleared out recent files in Excel on my Mac there were pointing to my Windows 10 vm. This seems to work so far.