Microsoft Excel Visual Basic Error

Question

I am running Windows 10. I have Office 365 ProPlus with 2013 apps installed on my laptop.

A few months ago, Excel started opening up a "PERSONAL.XLSB" file every time I opened the program. It didn't happen before. Looking online, one solution was to hide the file. I did this by creating an "Archive" subfolder in the ...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART folder that the personal.xlsb file was saved in and stashing the file into the "Archive" subfolder.

Around the same time, the following error started to pop up when I open up Excel:

The error doesn't come up everytime. It seems to come up every other time I open Excel. I know all is not right with the software because when I close the program, the program flickers through another window. Otherwise, Excel seems to run fine for what I use it for (minor spreadsheet work). 

I'm not sure if this issue is related to the PERSONAL.XLSB file issue or not, but I wanted to bring this up to provide as much information as possible.

I have gone twice through the following complete cycle: uninstalled Microsoft Office, shut down the computer, and reinstalled Microsoft Office. The error has not gone away.

Can someone help me get rid of this error every time I open Excel?

Answer 1

I am not sure if Personal.xlsb has anything to do with your problem but:

When Personal.xlsb is in the root of XLSTART then it opens every time Excel starts but it should open in hidden mode.

If it is not hidden: make it the active workbook, open the View ribbon tab, and click Hide in the Window group. Now do a save, exit Excel, open Excel and Personal should remain hidden.

Move Personal.xlsb back to the root of XLSTART and see what happens. Does it stop the error message?

If your Personal.xlsb file in not in the root of the XLSTART then it is not being used so you might as well delete it.

best wishes

Answer 2

Please look into C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel (replace user name with your user name, you can directly reach here by copy and pasting following without quotes in Explorer address bar - "%appdata%\Microsoft\Excel") and see if is contains few files / folders. Move those files to some other location (i.e create a backup of those files / folders and delete all files / folders 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 (In case, your XLSTART path is not in Appdata)

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" without quotes and press enter
5. You will have your path below.

Answer 3

The hide view trick didn't work. I had to archive the PERSONAL.XLSB file to get rid of the problem.

Answer 4

First idea to move all files and folders out of C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel didn't work. 

I'm still getting the same error message:

I also still get the program flickering through another window when I close Excel.

For the second set of instructions, opening Excel and pressing ALT+F11 opens up "Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications - Book 1" window:

Not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with this, or if this is to help with the first idea, which I've done and having the same error message.

Starting to think this is a wild goose chase...

Answer 5

Try Quick Repair of the office installation - https://support.office.com/en-NZ/Article/Repair-an-Office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b