Excel Trying to Open from Wrong Location

Question

Hello. I work in an IT Help Desk environment. I have a user who is having an issue opening a .xlsm file but is getting an error. The error reads as:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE

The specified path does not exist.

Check the path, and then try again.

It seems that when trying to open the file, it's trying to access Excel from the wrong location. Excel should be located in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE

Is there anything that could be causing this and what would fix the issue? I haven't seen this issue before and am not sure on how to get the file, when opening, to access Excel from the correct location.

Answer 1

Thank you for responding and for your help. Upon further review of this issue, it looks like the file was actually a shortcut. When looking at the properties of the shortcut, the Target was pointing to where the Microsoft Office Suite was not located on the user's PC. The shortcut was trying to access Excel through Program Files when the user's office suite is located in Program Files (x86). I updated the information in the properties and the user was able to access the file.

Answer 2

Hi Benji7Roeth:

Please check if there are any updates of Office. You can update your Office applications in the following ways: Open Excel -> File -> Account ->Update Options ->Update Now.

If your Office has been updated to the latest version, you can also try the following methods:

1. Repairing Office from the Control Panel:

Go to Control Panel -> Programs -> right-click on Office applications’ icon -> Change -> Online Repair.

1. Opening Office apps in safe mode to check whether there is an add-in or extension that may be causing a problem on startup.
2. Performing a clean boot in Windows determine whether a background program is interfering with your Office application.

If the problem still exists, please provide the following information so that we can understand your situation more specifically：

1. Do other Office applications have the same problem？
2. Screenshot of your Excel version information.
3. Does this problem occur in a special file? If you create a new workbook, will the same problem still occur？
4. Is this file saved locally or in the cloud?

Hope this will help you.

Tin

Answer 3

You more than likely switched from an office version that was based on a 32 bit versus an 64 bit version. All X64 based programs run from c:\program files in an 64 bit OS. 32 bit programs run from c:\program files (x86).