11

When I open Excel for Mac it always starts with a message

Excel saved changes to the file before the application quit unexpectedly.

It then prompts me to open the last saved version (even though last Excel session ended normally). When I click on Open, no previous sheet opens, it presents me with the window to select a blank sheet or to start from a number of existing templates.

Somehow it is hung up thinking the previous session was corrupted, the file(s) got autosaved and tries to open the autosaved version on every start. How can I solve this?

Blackwood
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Iyad
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5 Answers5

16

If you have Office 2016 go to /Users/[your User directory name]/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office and delete MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg file. Just in case make sure you have your MS ID or Office 365 subscription info.

Giacomo1968
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Roman
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3

Mac being *nix we can use ~ to represent the user's home folder.

Thus the most accurate answer is: Open Finder > Go > Go to Folder... and type:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office

Presssing Go opens a folder. Find and delete the file MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg.

In my case this resolved the problem and did not require me to re-license. It also saved over 600MB of disc space :)

ba296
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As a (less scary) variant on Roman’s answer, instead of deleting the original registration file, I simply moved it to break the link. This immediately fixed my issue within Excel, where the software was "remembering" and recommending a previous auto-save at each new session. I also signed out, and then signed back in, which created a new Registration file.

P.S. I am a Mac user, and I have an Office 365 subscription.

Scott - Слава Україні
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mcconnelljk
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I have an alternative suggestion but around the same thing. Because I am a scardy cat - i took the file listed above: /Users/[your User directory name]/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office and delete MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg file and moved it to the desktop. It was large 254 MB. I have loaded and unloaded multiple times so now I think its OK. Then if you have an issue you can move it back to the same location and then deal with the issue as its not a show stopper- just really annoying. Hope this helps

Professor Sabena
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-1

Office autosave files are under /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery, check if anything's in that directory, or try deleting it.

trapezoid
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