excel 2013 can't open old files

same issue-- just installed office 2013 (32 bit version recommended by Microsoft of course on their website) on a WINDOWS 7 64 bit machine. NONE of my 2010 Excel .xls or .xlsx file types will open! When check properties of the excel file it shows "opens with Excel (desktop) and shows the new bold E icon which is correct. All looks good but file will not open. All file type associations are also listed correctly. No "edit" to open will open the file. One strange thing is that when i open the 2013 program and look under Recent file --it lists some files i used previously to installing 2013 and then i click on one to open and it opened!  But it will not open any Excel files from any of my directories.  All my files are good and will open with 2010 Office. Publisher, Word and PowerPoint files all work fine and open with 2013---just not Excel. ---Only Excel files will not open---why??

PLEASE HELP!! 

 thanks, rob

I've been perusing this thread because I had a similar problem =)

I found that if I right click on the excel file>> properties >> general >> at the bottom there is a unblock button for safety or whatever - click it so its not highlighted...and that fixed the problem for me...

hi Shelley,

Thank you. I forgot to say my Outlook did not work either! No compatibility issue though it says...but it would not run and the popped message was that i had an older version of MS exchange....and it just stayed hung. tat hangs up ---its 2014...Why would you write software. So i went to delete the email account profile and create a new one and it still did not work....now i am still stuck using the Outlook 365 web mail which i do not like to use. Now i have to figure this out...you would think when MS writes the programs it would not leave you hangin to figure out things out when checks could thoroughly be embedded into a good piece of software! I totally agree with you---stupidly unnecessarily frustrating time consuming #$@!^^&*

all the best, 

Rob

Hi Rob,

You sound like you are having the exact same problem as I had except I was using Office 2008. Although all the advice says you should be able to run both versions on your PC/Laptop, I eventually ended up uninstalling my Office 2008 and reinstalling/downloading Office 2013. Since then it's all worked fine. The only other problem I had was with Outlook 2013 which I managed to sort out, the application had defaulted to 'compatibility mode' when it didn't need to be. Once I switched it it was fine. It could be something as simple as the compatibility mode issue with yours too. I hope you sort it soon I know how frustrating and time-consuming these issues can be!

Shelley

same issue-- just installed office 2013 (32 bit version recommended by Microsoft of course on their website) on a WINDOWS 7 64 bit machine. NONE of my 2010 Excel .xls or .xlsx file types will open! When check properties of the excel file it shows "opens with Excel (desktop) and shows the new bold E icon which is correct. All looks good but file will not open. All file type associations are also listed correctly. No "edit" to open will open the file. One strange thing is that when i open the 2013 program and look under Recent file --it lists some files i used previously to installing 2013 and then i click on one to open and it opened!  But it will not open any Excel files from any of my directories.  All my files are good and will open with 2010 Office. Publisher, Word and PowerPoint files all work fine and open with 2013---just not Excel. ---Only Excel files will not open---why??

PLEASE HELP!! 

 thanks, rob

When I clicked on an older file (xls)  Excel opened but the file was not displayed.  However when I opened Excel and then opened file from Excel the files displayed properly.   Very strange.