Excel 2013 starts up with blank screen when opened from explorer

Anonymous
2013-02-27T17:34:15+00:00

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.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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.

0 comments No comments

90 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Anonymous
    2014-12-08T16:26:28+00:00

    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

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2014-12-08T09:39:58+00:00

    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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2014-12-08T07:50:17+00:00

    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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Deleted

    This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.


    Comments have been turned off. Learn more

  5. Anonymous
    2014-11-24T15:09:54+00:00

    We are finding Excel 2013 crashes a lot when using CSV files and the new block file type protection is causing CSV files to enter into protected mode.

    Which then makes CSV files read only.

    Print Preview is also crashing on certain templates which worked fine under Excel 2007

    Has anyone else seen print preview crash in Excel 2013?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments