Forward compatibility with 2013

Question

I am a student and bought a surface pc with Office365 running excel 2013.  But my school is sending me files in 2010 and I cannot open them.  excel just throws the dots across the app as if its thinking about it.  Help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Officially Office 2013 applications can read Office 2010 files.

Question: which Surface do you have, the Pro or RT?  Office RT does not support macros and addins, so that could potentially be causing your problem.

If you have a Surface Pro, try opening excel in "Safe Mode", then use file open to try to open the file to see what happens.  Safe Mode disables addins, so it is a quick way to identify if that is the general cause of your problem

Shortcut to Start Word in Safe Mode or Excel in Safe Mode, Hold <CTL> key when clicking on icon orusing the Start menu search window and entering WINWORD.EXE /a or  WINWORD.EXE /safe

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Here are some generic trouble shooting procedures for Excel:

Trouble Shoot ExcelExcel cannot complete this task with available resources error, Excel 2010

**http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2655178******

Method 1: Check whether you exceed limits

Method 2: Make sure only one instance of Excel is active

Method 3: Close all applications

Method 4: Test Excel in safe mode

Method 5: Turn off the preview pane in Windows Explorer (Windows 7 only)

Method 6: Save as an Excel workbook file if you use relative names

Method 7: Change defined names to reference cells directly

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How to trouble shoot Excel 2000-2007 start up problems

**http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280504 2000-2010**(Fix It 50270 )

**http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919196 2000-2010**(Fix It 50270 )

NOTE: part of this procedure is disabling addins. If you want to take a shortcut, check to see if you have a BlueTooth addin installed. Various BlueTooth addins have been identified as the cause of problems with many different “random” symptoms. If you have a BlueTooth add, disable it.

If that doesn’t work, then try this more aggressive uninstall (followed by re-install) procedure:

Also uninstall Office Trial editions and any other Office-related programs such as “Office Activation Assistant” and any Office Viewer programs from the Programs applet in Control Panel. But you don’t have to uninstall Office Starter if you have it. Then make sure to reboot TWICE (sorry, I don’t know why, but there appears to be some “Voodoo” at play here. We do it because it works!) after completing repair or uninstall.

Starting Excel in Safe Mode

**http://excel.tips.net/T003365\_Starting\_in\_Safe\_Mode.html******

How to recover data from damaged workbooks in Excel

**http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820741******