Excel 2013 Starting With Two Windows?

Anonymous

Upon installation of Office 2013 yesterday, I have found in a day that Excel starts with Two Windows, i.e. one is the application with no Book, while the other offering to select from a collection of templates, from which if I select Blank Workbook, the blank one window remains to be opened, while the other operating one opens with a default template instead of the Book.xltx & Sheet.xltx placed in XLStart folder of Office15? Even upon exiting I need to close both the windows separately, in other words using Alt+F4 twice.

Any idea, what might be causing the trouble?

Thanx in advance.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hello Faraz,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft community. We are glad to assist you with your concern.

As per the description, looks like the Excel application starts in two windows.

To resolve the issue, let us open Excel in application safe and check how they work.

To do that, press the ‘Windows + R’ key on the keyboard.

In the Run open box type in ‘Excel /safe’ and hit ok.

Note: There is a space between Excel and /.

If application safe mode works, try disabling the add-ins associated with Excel applications and check.

To do that, do the following:

Open the application. Click on File and then click on options.
In the Options Window click on Add-ins.
Select Com Add-ins in the Manage list in the Add-ins section and click Go. Now uncheck the all the add-ins and click Ok.

You may also refer to the section Additional troubleshooting in the following article and check if it helps:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280504

If you still have questions, you can always reply and I’ll be happy to assist you.

Thank you

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Here's what finally appears to have worked for me. I suspected that it had something to do with the PERSONAL.XLSB workbook so after closing a regular workbook and getting the blank gray window I went to View>Window and found that Unhide was the only option so I clicked that and then Hide and saved the change and now everything closes as it should.

Bloody annoying that no one in MS support has been any help on this.

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92 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-04-15T15:07:44+00:00

It wasn't a purely "new installation" or you wouldn't have anything in your personal.xlsm. You most likely had either had excel on the machine before, or you upgraded (or maybe even opened a file that stored a macro in your personal.xlsm is a possibility). Yours is the simplest of these issues because it was caused by coding issues in your own macros (usually from coding them in an older version and upgrading or poorly designed code). Most folks on this thread have installed 3rd party add ons or ran other scripts unknowingly that have affected settings other than simply putting a bad macro in their personal.xlsm. So their problem wasn't of their own doing. My apologies for adding this solution to your thread for it is not relevant.

Also, for yours and other's reference, your fix is more of a band-aid because it limits excels ability to automatically call the macros in personal.xlsm which many of us would require and wouldn't want to have to manually initiate each time. To permanently fix your system, you could totally remove your personal.xlsm, and re add the macros back into the Excel 2013 either through VB Editor or re-recording them, if that's how you did it the first time (so it creates a new personal.xlsm with your macros in it and no errors). If your macros are coded properly, you will not have the issue going forward and you won't have to open personal.xlsm every time you need one of those macros.

Hope this helps someone :)

This post is buried in the thread so I will re-post here. It will most likely fix your problem. Please mark this and the original post as helpful so it will move up the results.

"I found this to be an easy fix. You have most likely installed an add in that modified your basic Excel settings. It can be very hard to locate the exact settings that cause the extra window to open. If you are at your wits end, press ' "win"+r ' to open the run program dialog box, then enter "excel /o" and press enter (no quotation marks) and it will reset your excel to the initial settings. In most cases, this is the easiest way to solve the problem.

We're here to help. Visit our page at workspacepros.com (we're redesigning our website so it is currently down; should be back up in a week or less; as of 4-10-15). *** Email address is removed for privacy ***

Your Expert Excel Resource,

Michael"

This was a new installation and first time use. I Tried the above suggestion and Safe mode neither of them worked for me. The only solution which did that still allows me access to the macros stored in my personal .xlsb file was the solution i posted of marking the file as hidden. i have not had an issue since.
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Anonymous

2015-04-15T15:02:08+00:00

This worked for me!
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Anonymous

2015-04-15T14:43:50+00:00

This post is buried in the thread so I will re-post here. It will most likely fix your problem. Please mark this and the original post as helpful so it will move up the results.

"I found this to be an easy fix. You have most likely installed an add in that modified your basic Excel settings. It can be very hard to locate the exact settings that cause the extra window to open. If you are at your wits end, press ' "win"+r ' to open the run program dialog box, then enter "excel /o" and press enter (no quotation marks) and it will reset your excel to the initial settings. In most cases, this is the easiest way to solve the problem.

We're here to help. Visit our page at workspacepros.com (we're redesigning our website so it is currently down; should be back up in a week or less; as of 4-10-15). *** Email address is removed for privacy ***

Your Expert Excel Resource,

Michael"

This was a new installation and first time use. I Tried the above suggestion and Safe mode neither of them worked for me. The only solution which did that still allows me access to the macros stored in my personal .xlsb file was the solution i posted of marking the file as hidden. i have not had an issue since.
Was this answer helpful?

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