Cannot Copy Sheets

Question

In the past, I have been able to open several .xlsx files from explorer at once.  Each file has one sheet.  Excel opened all of them in one copy of Excel, and I was able to right click on the sheet name, and move each one into the same file.

Today, I tried to do the same, but Excel opened five copies of itself, one sheet in each one.  If I try to click on copy, the only options are to move to the same file, or to the end of this one.  This happens even on files where it worked in the past.

When I open each file, I get an error that they may be corrupt:  they aren't, but more importantly, I got this error in the past and it didn't stop it from working then.  

If I try to move 'to book', 'new book', it says 'there needs to be at least one visible sheet in the workbook'.  I didn't try doing this in the past because simply moving worked.  

Any suggestions?  I have ~700 files I need to combine into one, and I need to preserve the sheet name.  Having to make new sheets, renaming the sheet, then copy/pasting from another file would take a very long time, rather than the hour or so it would have previously taken.

Answer 1

I didn't follow the clean boot steps because I found a workaround.  While I can't open many files from explorer, I found that I could open them from within Excel.  So if I open one from explorer, then file/open and go from there, it works.  It also has the advantage of being able to open > 10 at a time, a limitation of using explorer.  Maybe this will work for you too.

Answer 2

I am having the same problem, and it is driving me crazy. I move worksheets into one file EVERY SINGLE WEEK with timesheets. All files are .xlsx, and like Andrew said, when I open them all in Excel, instead of opening all in one copy of Excel like it did in the past, now it is opening multiple copies of Excel. And when I click on "Move or Copy..." none of the other open worksheets show up in the drop down. The only option I can choose is "(new book)". For the last two weeks I've been forced to choose "new book" and then it allowed me to combine those worksheets into one multiple tabbed file. But now today it will not let me even do that. I have wasted over an hour trying to figure out a way to do something that normally takes me 5 minutes.

So...I tried to do the fix posted below, by trying to repair my version of Excel. After 10-15 minutes of waiting for it to finish "repairing", an error message popped up that it encountered a problem. Awesome. Meanwhile, I am trying to find another fix, and I think the problem might be as simple as the fact that Excel is now for some reason opening multiple workbooks in multiple instances, instead of just one instance like it did before. So I go to open Excel to try and change that in Tools and oh. My Excel program is gone. Uninstalled in the "fix". So yeah. Now to waste more time reinstalling it. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.

Answer 3

I tried this on my home machine and the problem remains.

Answer 4

I'm 99% sure that isn't it because I get the same problem on my home version of office as I do at work.  Other files also work fine.  

I can check the link on my home machine later on though.

Answer 5

Hi Andrew,

The reason why you can't copy excel file might be a possible system conflict. We suggest performing a repair for Excel program by clicking this link. It's a tool created to repair any Excel issues.

Keep us in the loop with the result.