Excel is a powerful tool, but it gets even better when you can customize it to your needs. Some of its best options are hidden inside and we draw back the curtain for you.

This can occur due to corruption in a personal macro workbook (%appData% Microsoft Excel XLSTART ), and removing PERSONAL.XLSB from this folder caused the problem to go away. I had to export each of my macro modules to another folder, then after removing PERSONAL.XLSB, record a new macro stored in my 'Personal Macro Workbook' (which recreated PERSONAL.XLSB), then on the Developer toolbar, click 'Visual Basic' and import the macro modules again. All the shortcut keys and descriptions were maintained, but more importantly, I didn't get a second copy of Excel opening every time I opened a worksheet from Explorer. I had the exact same problem in Excel 2015 for quite a while, and when I hid the Personal.xlsb workbook, a blank page would open instead and I couldn't close that one without closing the file I actually wanted open. But I finally found a solution!

My problem was that I had a Personal.xlsb file in an alternate location, and for some reason a search of the C drive wasn't returning a match for that file name. My location was the same one that Amber mentioned above, but I wanted to share how I found it in case someone else has a different location. The solution is to find the real location of the Personal.xlsb file so you can delete it.

How to customize excel spreadsheet

To do that, open excel and switch to the Personal.xlsb file. Now select the 'File' tab on the top left which will load an 'Info' page. On the right side of the information on that page there is information such as 'Properties, Related Dates, Related People, and Related Documents.' Directly under Related Documents is a hyperlink that says 'Open File Location.' Click this hyperlink and excel will open the true location of the Personal.xlsb file regardless of where your particular installation has placed it.

Now close Excel, delete the Personal.xlsb file, and reopen Excel. It should open only the file you want and a second window will no longer appear. From this point on, I expect other tips online about creating/deleting/showing/hiding the Personal.xlsb file will work as expected. But I have left it deleted and Excel is finally loading as I expect. My extra window turned out to be a problem with add-ins.

Customize How Excel Opens Workbooks And Sheets

In Excel 2016, here's how to fix that:. Open Excel. Go to File Options. Click on Add-ins. Look at the Active Application Add-ins (so alliterative!).

At the bottom of the dialog, in Manage, set the dropdown to COM Add-ins and click Go. Uncheck the things you don't need. In my case, there were three COM add-ins active:. MySQL For Excel. DriveForOffice Google Drive add-in.

Customize how excel 2010 opens workbooks and sheets

Microsoft Excel Code Compatibility Inspector I left DriveForOffice but disabled the other two, and my extra window stopped showing up. I had this issue as well.

Thought it might be related to my PERSONAL.xlsb file like so many mentioned. However, it had always been successfully hidden up until recently. I went to the XLSTART folder to see if my personal workbook was indeed in the wrong place. It was there so I tried deleting and recreating it to no avail (just a big pain in my butt with the amount of macros I have).

How to customize excel sheet

I went back to the XLSTART folder and saw there was also an add-in file, something I had to install for work. I deleted this file and restarted Excel - no extra window! PERSONAL.xlsb stays hidden too. Not that this is everyone's issue but it was mine. I had the same problem because I had created macros, which saves in PERSONAL.xlsb located in C: Users username AppData Roaming Microsoft Excel XLSTART You can just open from this location go to the View tab and select Hide. From now on when you open a file this will no longer open as well, but will still allow use of, for example, macros created that you'd want to use in multiple files.

Customize Excel Shortcuts

Now that I have seen the solution to the problem I recall having unhidden this PERSONAL workbook that gets created, just cannot recall as to why I would have done it.