Unfortunately, many Excel users sometimes start experiencing problems
with their Excel: File not found errors, compile errors, GPF's, Excel
refusing to load, files which do not open, etcetera.
This is a list of things-to-try when Excel exhibits problems.
Content
Microsoft have created a tool that searches your Office installations
for known problems. It is called The
Office
Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT).
You can download and install
OffCAT v1.2 from the Microsoft Download site. You can either extract
the files from OffCAT.zip or you can run the installer using OffCAT.msi.
We recommend using OffCAT.msi because it contains system requirement
checks that ensure OffCAT will properly function on your computer.
- What is the target audience for OffCAT?
OffCAT is designed to be used by anyone that has Office installed on
their computer. This includes home users, small business people, Help
Desk professionals, Microsoft support engineers, and IT administrators.
Microsoft expects everyone to have the skillset required to follow the
directions provided in the list of detected issues. However, the
Configuration Details report is mostly aimed at moderate to advanced
users that can understand information in the registry, event logs,
Windows services and other places in Windows outside of the Office
applications.
With Windows 10 many problems have been reported in the newsgroups
and fora regarding Office. Microsoft has written an elaborate article on
the known issues and their possible resolutions here:
Known issues with Office and Windows 10
Excel shows errors during startup or behaves odd
Open Excel in Safe mode
Start, Run,
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe" /Safe
Tip: You can also start Excel in safe mode by holding
down the control key whilst you double-click the Excel icon.
The safe switch ensures Excel starts without opening any addins or using
your menu customisations. If this works, chances are that your toolbar
customisation file is corrupt. Locate all files with extension .xlb and
rename the extension(s) to something like .old
Now try and start Excel again.
In Windows, the xlb file is found by entering this into the Windows
Explorer
address bar and pressing the Enter key:
%AppData%\Microsoft\Excel
Try opening Excel without any addins or hidden workbooks
Use the Automation switch to start Excel without loading addins or
workbooks from the XLSTART folder:
Click Start, Run,
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe" /Automation
(Quotes mandatory, Note you may have to change the path)
If your error disappears, either an add-in or a (hidden) workbook that
is loaded upon Excel's start bothers you.
Locate the offending file using the following steps:
Excel
Add-ins.
- Click the File tab and select Options.
- Click the Add-ins tab
- In the dropdown near the bottom, select "Excel Add-ins" and click
Go.
- Note which are checked
- Uncheck one
- Restart XL
- If no error, you've found the one causing the problem
Com Addins
Another type of addins are COM addins.
- Click the File tab and select Excel Options.
- Click the Add-ins tab
- In the dropdown near the bottom, select "COM Add-ins" and click
Go
- Uncheck the first checked COM add-in and then reboot Excel and
verify if your problem goes away.
- Repeat from step 1 if the problem is still there.
If your problem still persist, some COM addins are not shown in the
userinterface and can only be unloaded from the registry. Check the
registry, at this location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\AddIns\
Warning: Backup your registry before making ANY changes!!!
Not an add-in? It may be a (hidden) workbook causing trouble then.
Check workbooks that load at startup.
- Find your XLSTART folder (in Windows Explorer, type %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
in the address bar and press the Enter key)
- Move all files out of that location
- Open them one by one (in Excel) and find the one with the error
- Move the others back.
You can also check whether a folder has been set to load at startup
and repeat the above for that folder.
Click the File tab, select Options, and click
the Advanced tab, scroll down to find the General section:
File tab, Excel Options, General tab
Removing Excel's registry entries
Sometimes all actions listed above don't help to resolve the problem.
For various users, removing Excel's main registry entry in Windows
Registry solved the problem.
Warning: All cautions about tampering with the
registry apply!!
As a last resort, remove the entire root folder of Excel from the
registry (it should be recreated when you launch Excel). This is the
registry key to remove:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel
First find this key and export it to your desktop by right-clicking
on the "Excel" entry in the folder tree and selecting Export.
When the export is done, right-click the entry in the tree again and
choose Delete:
Now restart Excel and see if that has helped.
Opening Files From Desktop Or Explorer Fails
Reregister Excel with Windows
If you have trouble loading Excel files by double-clicking, the shell
registration for Excel may have to be re-written. How to do that depends
on your Excel version.
To reset the File associations for Excel, run
setup/repair (running the Office setup in Repair mode from "Programs and
Features", aka "Add/Remove Programs").
Ignore other applications
Check in Tools, Options, General tab whether "Ignore other
applications" is set. Uncheck it.
Trouble caused by antivirus software
NAV has shown to cause "Excel caused an invalid page
fault in module VBE6.DLL".
You might try disabling the Office plug in of NAV.
Trouble caused by corrupt temporary files
When a workbook contains controls from Excel's control toolbox
temporary files are created in that folder. If such a temporary file is
somehow corrupted it may prevent the workbook it belongs to from working
normally and sometimes even causes Excel to crash. To try to avoind such
errors, emptying your Temp folder may help.
Select Start, run and type %temp% and hit OK to directly
open your temp folder.
Disabled files
Files may have been disabled when Excel
thought them to be the cause of a crash.
If you have had a problem with opening a file, Excel may have labeled it
as suspect.
Select the File tab (Office button in 2007) and click (Excel) Options.
Click the Add-ins tab and use the dropdown:
If the offending file is listed, select it and click Enable. The file
you just enabled may of course cause Excel to crash again, click
here to find some pointers on how to open corrupt Excel files.
Other resources
Do you have one particular file that causes trouble? Check out
this page.
Microsoft Fix-it
Microsoft has recently added two pages on this subject, both with
so-called "Fix-it" solutions for several elements stated above.
How to troubleshoot
Excel startup problems
With Windows 10 many problems have been reported in the newsgroups
and fora regarding Office. Microsoft has written an elaborate article on
the known issues and their possible resolutions here:
Known issues with Office and Windows 10
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm
http://www.contextures.com/xlfaqApp.html
