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When I double click any Excel file in windows explorer, Excel starts up maximized and I can see the ribbon but the whole grid area where my data should be is blank, no gridlines or row/column headers. If I "restore down" the Excel window then everything appears as normal.
I sometimes get subsequent Excel crashes.
I also get an Excel crash by clicking on an Excel file in windows explorer, as if to preview it. The Excel file preview function is not working since I installed Office 2013 Professional.
A family of Microsoft spreadsheet software with tools for analyzing, charting, and communicating data.
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Finally! Thank God this worked. I have been trying to find solution for over a year!
quick repair worked for me, thanks!
oh, steps, and note I'm 365
add remove programs
select office 365
change
quick repair
Thanks very much for this response. The problem I am having (very annoying!!) is that any time I single click on a file with the windows preview window on, it instantly opens up a blank excel screen which I have to x out of in order to get back to the preview window.
Also, often times I will double click on an excel file and both a blank excel window and the file itself opens. From my perspective, it's clearly an issue with how the preview is handled. Either way, it's a MS problem!!!
Thanks again.
It seems there are many things that can cause symptoms similar to what everyone is experiencing in this thread, but here's what fixed the grey "blank" screen for me. The workbook was simply hidden.
If your screen looks like this after opening your file:
Go to the View ribbon, and click "Unhide". You'll be asked which workbook to unhide, if you only have the one file open, click Yes.
This hidden state is saved along with the file, so it might sometimes seem that the file is corrupt, because it will be hidden on any computer you try it on.
Hope this helps someone, and sorry if this answer had been provided already, I did try to scan through previous posts.
I had this problem too, all of a sudden today. Nothing above worked, including repairing online (which is basically, I believe, a re-install). I ran system restore, and that fixed it. I was very concerned, because I had valuable data in some of my spreadsheets -- but system restore did the trick for me. YMMV.