Microsoft Excel cannot open or save any more documents because there is not enough available memory or disk space.

Anonymous
2013-01-14T20:16:02+00:00

Hello,

I am running Office Pro Plus 2013.

I try to open a 35KB xlsx and I get this message:

"Microsoft Excel cannot open or save any more documents because there is not enough available memory or disk space.

. To make more memory available, close workbooks or programs you no longer need.

. To free disk space, delete files you no longer need from the disk you are saving to."

I have 200GB free on drive C and 16GB RAM with only 18% in use according to task manager. My Users folder is actually on D: (it's a hard shorctut) and this has 800GB free.

Excel is opening all other things fine and all other office apps work fine (as does everything else) it's just this one small xlsx that is causing me problems.

Googling comes up with lots of results and all seem to either boil down to user error (insufficient disk space) or an incorrect path. A egistry hack, which I've tried, sets the Cache folder to point to c:\Windows\Temp. This makes no difference (but everything else still works)

The spreadsheet in question has been downloaded from Google docs. I've tried a few times to download and always get the same. I've also tried the ods format and I get the same results in Excel. Downloading as PDF, or CSV is fine.

Any ideas?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2013-01-15T10:20:44+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. As I understand, you are unable to open a particular Excel file which is downloaded from the Google docs.

Since the issue occurs with a particular file, it might be file specific issue.

Just a quick question:

What is the format of the File?

Save the file locally on the system and then try to open the file and check if it opens fine.

Right click on the saved file, click on Properties and uncheck the option Block and then try to open the file and check.

If you are still unable to open the file in Excel then open the file in CSV format, save the file as Excel file (.xlsx) and then try to open the file and check.

I hope the above suggestions helps to resolve your issue. If you need any further assistance reply and we will be glad to assist you.

Thank you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-07-11T08:56:11+00:00

    The solution is easy - it's just a stupid error message that has nothing to do with the actual problem, and the problem is actually a microsoft feature, as often is:

    • Office now has some kind of "protected-mode" feature, which prevents office apps from doing certain things under certain conditions.
    • One of them is to stop excel from opening attachments coming from outlook :-(

    Just go in Excel options, trust center, settings, and untick all the options about "protected view".

    Save and voila, suddenly excel can open all your files and has absolutely no problems with your gigs of free memory.

    Thanks to the brilliant minds who conceived such an awkward feature with awkward error messages and ultra-deep menu options to clear - and of course no simple help.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-15T10:33:26+00:00

    Right click on the saved file, click on Properties and uncheck the option Block and then try to open the file and check.

    The file format was xlsx.

    This fixed the problem, thanks.

    One would expect the error message to convey the error, though. Not something utterly generic and misleading like that.

    Darren

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-07-25T14:38:08+00:00

    I TAKE MY HAT OFF TO YOU GUS COPS!!! You are a genius...hey guys that's how simple the annoying message is fixed: go on Excel options or on Word options, trust center, settings, and uncheck all the options about 'protected view' then click ok...

    WORKS LIKE A CHARM

    THUMBS UP TO GUS COPS :-)

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-05-30T14:18:52+00:00

    I had similar error when creating new excel document.

    After correcting key in registry, error was gone.

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

    I've set Cacheto :

    C:\Windows\Temp

    Hope this will help somebody

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