Error communicating with Excel Services Application - Events 5231 5239 5240 (SharePoint Server 2010)

 

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

Alert Name:   Error communicating with Excel Services Application

Event ID:   5231, 5239, and 5240

Summary:   The front-end Web application made a request to a specific server for Excel Services Application and encountered an unexpected exception. This could indicate an intermittent problem or a problem with the specific server computer. In such a case, the Web front end attempts to load balance to a server computer. The Excel Services Application server is required to load workbooks and maintain session state for those workbooks.

Symptoms:   One or more of the following symptoms might appear:

  • Delayed load times for workbooks.

  • Workbooks fail to load.

  • This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 5231 Description: Unable to reach Excel Calculation Server <URL of machine> [Session: <session ID> User: <username>].

  • This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 5239 Description: There was an error in communicating with Excel Calculation Server <URL of machine> exception: <exception message> [Session: <session ID> User: <username>].

  • This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 5240 Description: There was an error in communicating with Excel Calculation Server <URL of machine> exception: <exception message> [Session: <session ID> User: <username>].

Cause:   The Excel Services Application server computer is in a non-valid state and may need to be restarted.

Restart the server

  1. Before restarting, verify that this problem occurs often. It may be an intermittent problem that is automatically corrected and does not require you to restart the server.

  2. If the problem occurs often, restart the server running Excel Services Application.

  3. If the problem continues to occur often, and restarting the server did not correct the problem, confirm that the hardware of the server is functioning correctly, or reinstall Excel Services Application and re-add the server to the server farm.