Import Spreadsheet - An unexpected error has occured. (Office 2016 / SharePoint 2013)

Question

I'm doing research as to why the Import Spreadsheet app in SharePoint 2013 (on prem) no longer works as I have Office 2016 installed on my Windows 7 computer using IE11.

the following message appears when I attempt to do so.

The only workaround I found so far is to approach this from excel 2016 and create a table and use the Export table to SharePoint list wizard found under the Design tab instead of importing it from the Import Spreadsheet app on SharePoint.

Any thoughts on how I might further troubleshoot this app would be most helpful.

Answer 1

After doing more testing I found that this worked on another workstation and narrowed it down to my computer that had the issue.

long story short I ran gpupdate /force in command prompt or powershell to update my computers policy / security information. This resolved the issue for me.

Answer 2

Hope that below Cumulative Update from Microsoft should resolve the issue related to importing from Excel 2016.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2920678/march-8--2016--update-for-office-2016-kb2920678

Answer 3

This is because of permissions. The user who is trying to open the (.iqy) file should be also added in site or site collection. Try after adding the user. I faced the same issue and it helped :).