Excel 2013 starts up with blank screen when opened from explorer

Hi everyone,

I found it for windows 7 64 bits.

My solutions trying upgrade, not working, and after many thing I went to open a files in excel and when to option after opening a .xlsx file go to option and general, personalize your copy of  Microsoft office, click always use this values regardless of sign to Office.

Put a background click ok close and reopen and now you could un check if you want and bingo when you reopen the files itself it will open excel and you will see your data without minimizing.

>>>>>>>>>>>

Michel

Alas no. I have tried so many options now. I have even discontinued using One Drive as the only way to open office files is to copy to my desktop and then they open but is kind of self defeating.

@Doonser You can remove this as this will not be applicable anymore.  I am sure since this is so old you have resolved the issue.  

One thing that I found that worked for our environment was to run the online repair.  This will basically re-install the office installation but fixes all issues that we had relating to this and other issues.  I would recommend if you have about 20 minutes (depending on internet speed)to run this.  It will mean that for a time you will not have access to office as the install starts.

After being stuck with this problem for well over a year, I have figured out that the problem may very well lie in a hidden PERSONAL.XLSB workbook.

I followed the "clean XLSTART" folder solution called out several times before in this thread and was able to solve the issue.

I believe that what Excel is trying to do when opening the Blank Excel Window is to try opening a hidden PERSONAL.XLSB workbook. If you go to "View --> Unhide" you will find the PERSONAL.XLSB file becoming unhidden.

By moving the PERSONAL.XLSB folder to some place else and cleaning up the XLSTART folder, the problem is now fixed.

I wanted to weigh in, because I was having a similar issue that led me to this thread, but I believe what various people are describing are symptoms related to different issues. In my case, after updating to Office 2013 on a Windows 7 machine, I was (intermittently, but almost always) getting the workbook I was double-clicking on from Explorer, in addition to a blank workbook. What seems to have remedied the issue was this:

Under Office 2010, I had a single saved Macro in a hidden PERSONAL.XLSB workbook. I unhid the workbook in order to delete the Macro, thinking it'd been corrupted somehow in the transition. Same issue. I navigated to the hidden workbook's location and moved it to the desktop. Issue resolved. As I've spent now 3-4 hours on this, trying all the various things suggested in this thread, I'm going to get to work. At a later time, I'll troubleshoot re-creating the Macro (since I use it every workday) in a new hidden workbook. I just wanted to contribute a little bit in case someone encounters the same issues as me and sees this comment embedded on page 5+ :)