MS Excel Errors

Microsoft Excel is such a powerful application that nobody knows everything about it and it is also not possible to explain every thing in these short articles. Here, we’ll try to find out the reasons and solutions to common errors that occur occasionally while working with MS Excel.

Sometimes while starting the application, excel crashed or refused to start properly and takes very long time. In such scenarios, you can start MS Excel in safe mode. Go to Start - Run and type “Excel.exe /Safe” or "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe /Safe” without quotes. This will start MS Excel application in safe mode without any add-ins, customizations or startup files.

But running excel in safe mode is not the permanent solution. You need to rectify it so that you won’t face such problems again. Generally, these types of errors occur due to corrupted or missing registry entries. These registry entries can either be restored by reinstalling the application or by re-registering the Excel program in registry file. Go to Start -  Run and type “Excel.exe /UnregServer” or you can also enter the complete location path as we used for starting the application in safe mode, if the above command is giving any error. Once this process is complete then repeat the same command with “/RegServer” in place of “/UnregServer” This command instructs Excel to rewrite all of its "factory default" information to the Windows system registry and re-establish links among the various components of Excel.

Another reason could be corrupted customization files that excel use to store customized menus and toolbars. Excel stores all customizations in files with extension XLB. Search the entire hard disk for *.XLB files, make sure that you search all hidden files also. Once found, move all the files to some other location apart from their default locations and then try to start Excel application. This will start the application without any customized toolbars. If it succeeds, then try starting the Excel by replacing the XLB files one by one in its original location to identify which XLB file is creating problem.

MS Excel uses XLStart folder(s) to open all files. Search your hard drive for folders named XLStart. When Excel starts, it opens all the files in these folders.  Find these folders, and move the files in them to another location, such as the Desktop. Start Excel normally.  If Excel starts, one of the files in the XLStart folders is the problem.  Add the files back to the folder, one at a time, starting and closing Excel between each file, until the problem recurs. When the problem recurs, you have found the file that is causing the problem. Remove that particular file from the XLStart folder. You may find more than one XLStart folder as it depends upon the version of Excel you are using and the version of Windows.

Another solution is to use “Detect and Repair” function in Excel application. This function is only available in version 2000 and above. This function finds and replaces all the files that are missing or corrupted that Excel needs for its proper functioning. This option is available in Help Menu. You will require application installation CD.

The above are the most common reasons to MS Excel errors and most of time these errors can be solved easily by performing the above steps. In case everything fails, then re-install the application again.

But, do you know that most of the application errors, be it any application, occur due to corrupted or missing registry entries related to that particular application. But registry maintenance is the most neglected area. So, it is very important to keep the windows registry clutter free and healthy. But on the other hand, registry is a very crucial file in windows and it is absolutely not advisable to play with this file if you don’t understand what you are doing.

Then, what is the solution? The solution is registry repairing utilities like Errorsmart that helps you to scan and identify all registry related errors and rectify them automatically and safely with few mouse clicks.

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