This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
This problem did not start occurring until AFTER I uninstalled Office 2007. Then the issue started. I read this thread and repaired Office 2013 with "Online Repair" and it resolved the problem. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
A lot of customers will be moving from Office 2007 to Office 2013
Microsoft need to make this as reliable as possible.
The uninstall of Office 2007 should not corrupt the install of Office 2013.
Microsoft need to work on this harder.
Hi all,
I wonder if anyone has a solution. It seems there are multiple and varied occurrences of this issue. My issue is similar to Option #3 quoted below only my problem is not intermittent. Anytime I preview an excel file in Explorer (single click) a blank Excel window opens automatically (intrusively, annoyingly, obscuring my view and seemingly without any purpose).
It's frankly infuriating as I use the windows preview quite often.
Option 3 - One user reported - I was also having this intermitttent issue and I found out that it is related to the Explorer preview pane. It only occurs if the preview pane is open and the xls file was never selected. Double clicking on the xls file opens 2 instances of excel (one empty). The second instance is probably the one used to show the file in the preview pane. Once the file have been seen at least once in the preview pane(during the current session) the issue does not occurs, anymore (until reboot and/or some time has elapse. I guess there is some sort of caching). TURN OFF THE PREVIEW PANE IN WINDOWS EXPLORER. If the preview pane is a must, you can right click and 'open' the document and not get the issue.
Thanks for any help.
Mike
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.
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.