PowerPivot does not run in Excel 2013 unless the user is an admin on the machine. Is this by design? And what's the fix? Seems a fix for this was issued for a previous version of Excel (KB2703880).

Error message when running PowerPivot in Excel 2013:

Thanks!

Hi Dagher,

I just checked this on my test environment, I have Excel 2013 (15.0.4420.1017) MSO (15.0.4420.1017) 32-bit, when logged on with Users account, I could still open the PowerPivot, I checked serveral feature, also worked.

Suggestions:

1st, try check for the latest update for your Office, and install them if you haven't.

2nd, since the Users account might not have enough permission to access network resources, check if there are any external data in your workbook.

If you can still use a workbook with local data source to reproduce this behavior, please provide the detail steps so we can check on it.

Thanks for the suggestions. Please see below scenario which we tried, but to no avail:

1. All updates were installed.
2. This behavior manifested on a brand new workbook, so there wasnt any external data.

 Detailed steps were:

1. Install excel 2013
2. Get all updates
3. Open Excel 2013
4. Install the powerpivot add-in
5. Attempt to open a (blank) PowerPivot data model
6. Error messages, Powerpivot wont start.

Just wondering if there's any updates on this. I would imagine other users are having the same problem with non admin accounts

Hi,

Just let you know that I have tried to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue.

This problem does not happen with PowerPivot out of the box. I tested on two different systems where I logged in as a user that didn't have admin rights and PowerPivot worked without a problem.

This means something external to Excel is causing your problem. There is a known issue where if you have Analysis Services 2012 installed on the same machine that you will get this error. And as the article you pointed to says, the problem can also be caused by a group policy locking down necessary permissions for the user account. I would check both of these, first.

Will Buffington
Microsoft Excel Support

Thanks for the update. Where can I check the SetIncreaseBasePriorityPrivilege user right?

Is MS planning on creating a fix that will allow users to run powerpivot without having this user right in the future?

A fix was already released. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2721122

Thank you for the update. Does this apply to Excel 2013 as well?