Opening Excel on Surface Pro 7 can cause it to freeze

Question

Hi,

We have several Surface Pro 7's in our business, and all of us face the same issue.
If Excel is not open and we open it by double clicking a file, Excel starts to open then the entire Surface Pro 7 freezes.
We've tried waiting and nothing happens. We have no choice to press and hold the power button to turn off.

This is so annoying.
We are having to open Excel when we start up just so that opening a file doesn't cause this.

I've seen loads of people online complaining about this, but no solution.

Windows 11 Pro, Office 365

Answer 1

Hi AdrianColes-6551,

I'm not aware of any fix for this issue, but there are some workarounds better than the one you're using that may help:

Right Click to Open the Excel

If Excel is crashing after double-clicking the target excel file, or, the excel program starts up but it comes with a blank white screen, you can try right-clicking on the file and select Open.

Uncheck the Ignore Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) Box

One of the causes of Excel crashing on Windows 10/11 when double clicking a file is that your Excel is set to ignore other applications that use DDE. The function of the DDE is to send a message to Excel once you double-click a file. Therefore, Excel instructs to open the file. By ignoring those applications, Excel won’t receive their messages, so, Excel cannot open the files.

Therefore, close the ignoring feature will possibly fix your issue.

Step 1. Open the Excel program by creating a new Excel file.

Step 2. In the new Excel file, navigate to File > Options > Advanced > General.

Step 3. Uncheck the “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)”.

Step 4. Click OK to exist.

Reset Excel File Associations

To reset the file associations of Excel to default settings will also solve the “Microsoft Excel won’t open” problem.

Step 1. Open Windows Control Panel by searching it in Taskbar.

Step 2. In Control Panel, go to Programs > Default Programs.

Step 3. Under Default Programs, click Set your default Programs.

Step 4. Then, it will open the Default apps screen in Windows Settings. There, scroll down and click Set defaults by app.

Step 5. On the next screen, click on Excel in the app list and click Manage under Excel.

Step 6. On the next screen, click behind the file extensions of the won’t open files and set their default App as Excel.

Or, you can simply change the default open app of the target file by right-clicking on it and select Open with. Then, in the app list, find and choose Excel. Finally, check “Always use this app to open .xlsx files” (for instance) and click OK.

Repair Microsoft Office

Since Excel belongs to Microsoft Office, so, repair office may also deal with Excel won’t open issue.

Step 1. In Control Panel, under Programs, click Uninstall Programs.

Step 2. In the next window, right-click on Microsoft Office and select Change.

Step 3. In the pop-up window, select Online Repair and click Repair button.

Wait until the repair finishes. Then, restart your PC.

You may find that if you have built all of your surface devices from the same image, that there is a corruption in that image and is causing the issue across all of your devices. In which case, I recommend recreating the image and rebuilding your surface devices.

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Answer 2

Hi @Adrian Coles ,
What version of Excel are you using? Go to File- Account- About Excel:

Make sure you have installed the latest updates for Office.

You could open Excel in safe mode: Press Win + R, type "excel /safe" in the blank box, press Enter. If it works fine in safe mode, please check the add-ins in your excel and disable them.
Click File > Excel Options > Add-Ins on the left side of the dialog. Then click the drop-down arrow at the bottom of the dialog box and select "COM Add-Ins" from the list, then click the GO button. What comes up is a list of COM-Add Ins that are loaded and running.

If nothing is wrong when opening Excel in safe mode:
You can try to move the files in C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART to other location temporarily, then check if the issue still exists.

If issues still exist, you could also run Excel as administrator: right-click Excel and Run as administrator.

Just checking in to see if the information was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

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