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
    2017-07-02T17:24:19+00:00

    Just an input.

    I had the same issue with Microsoft Excel 2016. A few Excel files which were send to me in outlook were not working.

    I couldn't find the unblock option in the properties. I took the details tab and Contents section, used the option, remove properties and personal information. i didn't care much about it, as my priority was to have the excel opened. And it worked.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-07-02T15:50:11+00:00

    By checking the unblock in properties,

    it works. Thanks

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-06-28T19:21:42+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.

    THIS.

    unchecked all the "protected view" ptions as the above stated (Trust Center etc etc).

    This did the trick for me.

    Win7 Pro SP1

    MS Office 16

    Excel file that had problems came form employer, unknown version, date, etc.

    This is as-of June 2017.

    Thanks, Gus Cops!

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-06-01T04:07:51+00:00

    Thank you so much for posting the solution. It's so frustrating when out of a sudden all my MS files cannot open in outlook. Now, the problem is solved!!!

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