Excel closes when opening encrypted document

Question

I have Excel 365 Home running on a Windows 7 laptop.  I also have an Excel file that is encrypted with a password. I've worked on this file in various revisions on this particular PC. Starting last month, when I try to open the file, Excel not only doesn't open the file, it crashes and closes Excel with no message on the screen. If I copy and then rename the file it opens normally.  I can also open the original file from my office PC (running Windows 10 and Office 365 Business) and I can open it on my iPad.  

Has anyone ever run into this and know to work around this problem?

Answer 1

Hi, how are you, thanks for posting in our microsoft community. I suggest that you read this information in the links below and see if it helps you:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/275859...

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-...

Hope above suggestions work and good luck!

Answer 2

Hi BornABruin2,

I am Vijay, an Independent Advisor. I am here to work with you on this problem.

Please try these options one by one and check after each option.

1. Sometimes, add-ins can cause problems. To determine, if add-in is a problem start your application in safe mode and see if problem has gone away.

To start in Safe Mode -

Hold CTRL key and click on application icon and don't release the CTRL key till it asks you for Safe mode confirmation.

If yes, then start application normally and disable add-ins one by one and start application again every time you disable an add-in to determine the culprit add-in.

To disable add-in > File > Options > Add-ins > Down below you have Manage: Com Add-in : Press Go > Untick the Add-ins to disable and tick to enable them

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 Excel and see if the problem disappears or not.

Note - If the above path is not applicable for your installation, you need to find XLSTART path. Excel folder contains XLSTART folder in itself (In case, your XLSTART path is not in Appdata)

Open Excel > ALT+F11 > If Immediate Window is not visible, type CTRL+G. Same can be also be accessed through View > Immediate Window > Type "? application.StartupPath" without quotes and press enter > You will have your path below.

3. Try repairing your office installation (Quick repair is good enough). Try repairing your Office installation. First try Quick Repair (takes 5 - 10 mins) , if that doesn't help then try Online Repair (Takes more than 30 mins but less than 1 hour in general)

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Repair...

Do let me know if you have any more question or require further help. If above didn't work, I will supply more troubleshooting steps to solve this problem.