Fix: Excel won’t Open

Microsoft Excel is one of the most popular spreadsheet editors out there in the Microsoft Office suite. It allows users to edit excel worksheets and CSV files on the go. However, there have been several instances where Microsoft Excel doesn’t open at all.

Excel might fail at opening an existing worksheet from a network location or the local directory. In some cases, the worksheet might appear working when opened online or through Excel preview but it may fail to open properly in the application. This behavior is very common in Microsoft Excel and is usually solved with simple workarounds.

Why won’t my Excel Sheet open?

The reasons why your Excel worksheet doesn’t open are quite a few and diverse to the main modules. Some of the causes why Excel fails to open are but not limited to:

Before we move on with the solutions, make sure that you are logged in as an administrator and have an active open internet connection.

1. Repairing Office

In the majority of the cases, the reason why users are not able to open their excel sheets is that the installation files of Microsoft Office are either corrupt or have missing modules. If the installation itself isn’t complete or in a working state, you won’t be able to use individual programs such as Excel. We will try to repair the application through the application manager.

1. Press Windows + R, type “appwiz.cpl” in the dialogue box, and press Enter.
2. Once in the application manager, locate the entry of Microsoft Office. Right-click it and select Change. If there is an option of Repair here, you can click it directly.

3. Select the option of Repair from the following windows and press Continue.

4. Now follow the on-screen instructions and when the process is complete, restart your computer and check if you can open the Excel file easily.

2. Un-hiding the Worksheet

If you are experiencing a problem where you can see the excel file in preview but cannot open it for editing, it probably means that your sheet is hidden from view. Microsoft Excel has a feature where users can hide their sheets, rows, or columns from the workspace and View. You should follow the steps below to unhide your sheet.

1. Open your Workbook and stay on the blank page when it loads.
2. Now click View from the tab present at the top and click Unhide from the navigation bar.

3. Your worksheet will now be unhidden and you can make changes and view it like any other worksheet. If you are hiding specific rows or columns from your sheet, you can click Format > Hide & Unhide > Unhide Rows/Columns

3. Changing File Directory

There are quite some limitations if you are not opening/accessing the file from any location other than your local store. These are put in place to manage the accessibility of the worksheets with other modules present. Here are issues because of which a lot of users face the issue of Excel not opening.

• The file and path name is limited to 254 characters. If any of them exceed 254 characters, Excel will not be able to open the file.
• If you are opening the file from the ‘Open’ tab in Excel, try opening the file through browsing. It seems that the paths listed there do not auto-update and keeps the old directory in their properties (if you have renamed or moved the file).

Because of these technicalities, it is recommended that you open the file from your local storage i.e. the file should be physically saved on your computer’s hard drive instead of network shares or other modules.

Note: You can also try disabling the add-ins installed on your Excel. These are known to cause problems with launching sometimes.

4. Reinstalling Office Suite

If all the above methods don’t work, you can try reinstalling the Microsoft Office suite completely. There are some loopholes which even the repair utility isn’t able to fix (as in Solution 1). Make sure that you have your product key at hand and your Microsoft account credentials as you will most probably be asked to enter them again later on.

1. Press Windows + R, type “appwiz.cpl” in the dialogue box, and press Enter.
2. Once in the application manager, locate the entry of Microsoft Office. Right-click it and select Uninstall.

3. Now insert the CD (if you have one) or download the latest version available from Microsoft’s official website.

Note: You should also make sure that you have the latest version of Office and Windows installed on your computer. Make sure that you install all the security updates of Office Suite released through Windows update.

5. Deleting the Corrupted Registry Keys

If none of these methods worked for you at all, there may be some keys misconfigured present on your Windows, that are causing these Offices apps to stop working. There is a Registry Key file that you can download and run to get this issue resolved. Follow these steps:-

1. Download the registry file from this link (here).
2. Once it’s downloaded, double-click on it and follow the on-screen instructions to resolve this issue.

   

3. Check to see if the issue persists.