I have seen this error and used the DDE ignore. Only slight improvement on open/close times was noted. I then observed the user opening linked sheets in Pro-Diver and saving them and closing them, then closing the application. The user then opened the next sheet containing extensive links by navigating to the icon of the sheet and restarting Excel. It turned out that the application not completing the OLE action was actually Excel not being allowed to shut down completely. After I trained the user to navigate to successive sheets without closing the original open Excel app, all issues resolved. Memory was not being allowed to be returned to the OS and successive efforts extended the performance error.