phantom window when opening Excel file from Windows Explorer or QuickBooks Export

Question

When I double-click on a .xlsx file in Windows Explorer to open an Excel file, I get two windows, the file I want plus a blank one, as if I had run Excel without specifying a file.  If I close the phantom file, it closes the one I want as well.  If I close the desired file, the blank one remains.  If I create an Excel file as an export from QuickBooks, I cannot close out of the phantom windows--I have to use Task Manager.  Just yesterday I repaired my Office2013 installation from the Install/Uninstall listing in the Control Panel, selecting the Change option.

Any idea what might be causing this and how to fix?

Answer 1

Option 1 -  Please look into C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel (replace user name with your user name) and see if is contains few files. Move those files to some other location (i.e create a backup of those files and delete all files from here). Hence, make Excel folder blank.

Now open the file and see if the problem disappears or not.

Note - to find Excel path, you need to find XLSTART path. Excel folder contains XLSTART folder in itself.

1. Open Excel
2. ALT+F11
3. If Immediate Window is not visible, type CTRL+G. Same can be also be accessed through View > Immediate Window
4. Type ? application.StartupPath and press enter
5. You will have your path below.

Option 2 - Few users have faced problem because of .xlb file. Go to C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel as in Option 1 (This path is one level lower of XLSTART) and change the extension of .xlb file(s) to omething else say .xlb1. Close Excel and restart Excel again. Your old .xlb file will be there in the folder so that in case you need it in future.

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.

Option 4 - Look if in recent past, you had installed any Add-In. Disable that and see. To disable, File > Options > Add-Ins and you can manage Add-ins here. - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/why-cant-i-start-my-office-2013-application-HA104011864.aspx

Option 5 - How to troubleshoot start up problems - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280504/en-us

Option 6 - How to prevent files from opening automatically in Excel - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826922/en-us

Option 7 - Login to Windows with a new user profile and run Excel.

Answer 2

Now, you can start restoring your files one by one. I had advised that you need to have a backup of those files before deleting.

Once, you do it one by one and work on excel, you will know exactly which is the culprit file. I will suggest you do it for your .xlb, .xlsb files first as they contain your macros. Specially, do it for files in XLSTART first as that contains PERSONAL.xlsb.

Answer 3

Option #1 fixed it.  Thanks very much.  It also eliminated some macros I had programmed in VBA to be available to all my spreadsheets.  If there's an easy way to retrieve them, that would be nice.

Answer 4

I found this to work but is there a way to not have the phantom window appear with the personal.xlsb file with saved macros?  If I manually recreate the macros will the issue still occur?

Answer 5

Update: I re-created a macro for my own use in any Excel instantiation, which created a new personal.xlsb in my XLSTART folder.  I now get a phantom window briefly on opening an Excel file from Windows Explorer, then the phantom vanishes into the ethers from which it came.  When I create an Excel file from QuickBooks, I get 2 phantoms.  Sometimes they can be closed and sometimes not.  Each phantom seems to be associated with an open .xls file.  When I try to close a phantom with its associated .xls file still open, it asks if I want to save the open file.  After closing the file, the phantom remains some of the time, but not all the time.

Livable but annoying.  Not worth extensive debugging time, but if you know of any easy anecdotes to try, I'd be interested.