Excel intermittently crashes / disappears caused by installing Office via 'click to run'

Symptom

Example #1:

Microsoft Excel instantly disappears (crashes without a screen error message) when using Controller functionality.

In one real-life customer case, the users could reproduce the problem easily by performing the following steps:

1. Launch the 'main' Controller client (CCR.EXE)
2. Click "Company -> Data Entry – reported values"
3. Choose the parameters, and open a data entry form:


4. Afterwards, inside Excel, open a different data entry form by pressing 'Data Entry' button:


5. Enter the parameter value of the new form


6. Press the open button
7. Excel disappears (closes without error or warning message)

8. If the user now tries to launch Excel, then they get the following message:

Microsoft Excel
Excel is running into problems with the 'cognos controller link for microsoft excel' add-in. If this keeps happening, disable this add-in and check for available updates. Do you want to disable it now?

There is no error recorded inside the Windows Event Viewer 'application log'.
===================================

Example #2:

In a different real-life customer example, a similar problem occurred (as described above) except that (in step 7) the following error appears:

Microsoft Excel has stopped working

Details:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: EXCEL.EXE
Application Version: 16.0.8431.2079
Application Timestamp: 59b25e0b
Fault Module Name: EXCEL.EXE
Fault Module Version: 16.0.8431.2079
Fault Module Timestamp: 59b25e0b
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000000153c0
OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.16.7
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: c5b1
Additional Information 2: c5b1fc09dff0ebb735c438bb8d56b3d1
Additional Information 3: f299
Additional Information 4: f299967551058d7ae4419525276d0178