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
    2016-10-27T17:36:16+00:00

    I did not find this helpful because in order to get an active property box you need to open a document but it will not open because you get the error .  Catch 22!

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-12-06T19:53:56+00:00

    OMG... can't believe that the instructions at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2285187 fixed the problem that I too was having with Excel 2016. One of which was not opening cvs files that I had copied to my new laptop from an external hard drive.  As I am using Chrome rather than Explorer (or heaven forbid Edge), I went with method 2. I really wasn't hopeful it was going to fix anything as the Cause was cited as "The Temporary Internet Files folder for Windows Internet Explorer set to be in a location where you do not have permission to create new temporary files" but alas it did.

    Much thanks.... :-)

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-12-14T10:00:09+00:00

    Thanks

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-12-15T08:52:46+00:00

    bai sadde taan chleya nai !! :P :P Put you 'HAT' down

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