SAP Office Integration Excel 2013 problem - dummy window pops up with inplace

Question

Hi experts all around the globe,
we are facing a strange problem by some of our users since they have installed Excel 2013 on their PCs. An annoying Excel sheet pops up while generating an excel file in the background.
They are working with several Y (or Z if you like it better so) transactions, and create multiple Excel files (Excel.Sheet.8 -> .xls) in the background. The programs are using Office Integration (interfaces I_OI_CONTAINER_CONTROL and I_OI_DOCUMENT_PROXY) to create the files.
Method OPEN_DOCUMENT is called with the parameter OPEN_INPLACE, modified, and then closed with the CLOSE_DOCUMENT method, then saved with SAVE_DOCUMENT_TO_URL. The document gets only assigned to a dummy container, this means under normal circumstances the user shouldn't see anything - the file gets created, modified and stored in the background - end of the story. The programs are like 10 years old, and have been doing good since then.
Now some of our users reported, that they have an issue when generating Excel files with those programs. We have investigated / debugged, and here is the thing: in several cases when the method OPEN_DOCUMENT is called, an empty worksheet pops up (see attached screenshot). It also gets in focus, and then in 1 sec is it closing again (as the CLOSE_DOCUMENT is called). This is really annoying when the user has to generate hundreds of Excel sheets (it is quite often the case). The window gets opened and closed with every single file that gets created.
We have tried to identify the problem, but it is user independent, the SAP GUI, Office and Windows versions seem to be all the same - though it appears by some users. The most of us work with SAP GUI 730 Patch level 4, but upgrade to Patch level 9 has also not solved the problem. We have found the notes 1908528 and 1804535. They address similar problems but not exactly the same. We think it has something to do with incompatibility of the releases, or simply an Office / SAP setting we could not think of.
Has someone encountered the same? Any ideas?
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Boldi

Answer 1

Hello Daniel,
thank you very much for your reply, it is really appreciated.
We have SAP GUI 7.30 Version 7300.3.9.1084 Build 1496147 Patch Level 9 on the test machine. This one should be the latest available version, am I right?
The issue is a little bit different from the ones described in the SAP notes you suggested. The data is getting "correctly" displayed inplace, but Excel is also getting called up in the same time, and an additional emtpy sheet is displayed, which gets in the focus, disturbing the user. It is just like described in the SAP notes 1425448 and 1567380
To 1425448 (Solution Point 2 below): this is our standard setting, and it does not help us.
To 1567380 (Prerequisites): there is no macro in our sheet.
We could reproduce the issue with the standard report SAPRDEMO_SPREADSHEET_INTERFACE (this is the one suggested in SAP note 1908528 - "Verifying that Excel inplace functionality is working correctly"). The SAP GUI overtakes the focus after a while, as described in the SAP note 1567380, but the empty sheet is active at first, and it is a little bit more than annoying.
How is it on your side, could you please run the standard report (EXCEL, checkbox for inplace set, then Enter) to confirm that the problem exists?
Thanks a lot in advance and have a nice day!
Boldi