Apologies, a bit wordy…

After years of being slightly frustrated by OpenOffice, and then LibreOffice, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and signed up for a Office 365 subscription. I went for one of the packages that include a full Office 13 installation. I downloaded the installer and let it do it’s thing.

When it had said it was done, I tried to open a couple of spreadsheets (by double-clicking directly on them; I noticed that Excel had set itself as the default application) I’d created and had been using in LibreOffice (althought they were saved as .xls/.xlsx). Excel thought about it for a bit and told me it had experienced a problem and would close. Smashing. So, I opened Excel directly, fine. When I browsed to the spreadsheets and tried to open them, it had a problem again and closed.

Exactly the same happened with Word docs.

So, I rebooted to see if that would sort any registry-type confusion. Same result.

I then did the ‘Quick Repair’ option in Add/Remove Programs, rebooted after and tried again. Same result.

So I then did the ‘Full Repair’ option in Add/Remove Programs, rebooted after and tried again. Same result.

Grr.

I suspect that it’s something to do with the format of the files that LibreOffice has created and saved (even though
they’re .doc/.xls/.xlsx). However, I have opened them with no problems on another machine with Office 2010 (and in Sheets on my phone).

My next thought is to uninstall LibreOffice, in case there’s any file-default knicker-twisting going on anywhere. After that I’m a bit stumped.

Any ideas?

Do a virus/spamware/crap update and scan.

Can you open them in LibreOffice and save them again under a different new file name and try opening that?

Also try sticking them on your onedrive and open them in online excel to rule out issues with your local installation.

Also try sticking them on your onedrive and open them in online excel to rule out issues with your local installation.

Hmm, I’ve just stuck it in the OneDrive, installed Excel on my phone (couldn’t really work out how I open it ‘online’) and it opens fine on there.

If you login to onedrive on a computer you will see the doc and have the option to open it online or with the local copy of excel.

If it’s opening fine in the cloud then there is a chance its something funky on your computer. Removing LibreOffice could be a good shout if you’ve already done all the AV/Malware scans.

Ah, okay.

I thnk tonight’s job will be an AV/malware scan, uninstall LibreOffice, ccClean etc

it opens fine on there.

What if you then save it using that mobile copy of Excel, then try opening it in O13?

I’ll have to try that later Cougar, the problematic laptop is the home one which is at er, home.

[edit]and I can’t get to OneDrive from my work laptop, access to online storage being verboten.

Right, me again.

Last night I uninstalled LibreOffice, restarted, and tried to open the spreadsheet in question directly (i.e. double clicking on it in Explorer). Windows asked me what application should open it. “A-ha”, I thought, maybe we’re getting somewhere, because it has an Excel icon, and before I uninstalled LibreOffice it was opening (and failing) in Excel, maybe the problem before was some default application confusion. So, I picked Excel, and… ‘Excel had a problem’ 🙁

So, I did a quick repair and full repair of Office 13. Problem remains.

Installed ccCleaner, ran a registry clean up. Problem remains

It’s currently running (well, it might have finished by now, I left it going before I went to work) a full Malware/Spyware scan using Spybot 3D Search and Destroy. I doubt thsi will do anything, but you never know.

I did try opening it in online Excel via OneDrive, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how to do this…

Any ideas?

Can you create, save and re-open new Excel files (i.e. not ones you’d created previously)?

I did try opening it in online Excel via OneDrive, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how to do this…

If you have a hotmail (or any MS hosted email) you can email it to yourself and view online.

Can you create Excel workbooks and recall them ok with the software – ie. it only your existing stuff that’s causing a problem?

tbh, if you can open them in 2010 on another machine then it may be quicker just opening them all on there, saving them via Excel and sorting it out that way?

Can you create, save and re-open new Excel files (i.e. not ones you’d created previously)?

This I haven’t tried yet.

tbh, if you can open them in 2010 on another machine then it may be quicker just opening them all on there, saving them via Excel and sorting it out that way?

Yeah, but there’s quite a lot of them (Word and Excel)

Me again, again.

So, when I got home last night, the malware scan had finished. few issues, nothing major, all sorted.

I tried to open an existing spreadsheet in Excel…”Excel had a problem”

I tried to open a blank workbook in Excel and…”Excel had a problem”. FFS.

“Bollocks to this” I thought, “I’m reinstalling Office”. So I uninstalled it, did a registry clean (again, and it was still finding things saying ‘LibreOffice’…), downloaded a fresh copy of Office and installed it.

So, with my freshly, fully installed copy of Office 13:

– I tried to open an existing spreadsheet in Excel…”Excel had a problem”

– I tried to open a blank workbook in Excel and…”Excel had a problem”. FF-etyFS 👿

I’m running out of ideas 🙁

Does Word or any of the other Office components work?

I haven’t tried yet (I only tried Excel quickly before I left for work), but I tried Word when I was having the initial problems with Excel (i.e. before my first post) and was getting the same problem. I’ll try them tonight, but I’d put money on them not working.

Excel opens fine, it’s when I try to open a workbook (existing or new) that it goes splat.

Wonder if it’s permissions or something?

The microsoft forums are often a good source of help, I’ve found.

Chdksk and sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt might be a good start.

Stop “cleaning” your registry, it’s not dirty.

Chdksk and sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt might be a good start.

Thanks, what will that do?

Stop “cleaning” your registry, it’s not dirty.

Fair enough. I thought that old installations that weren’t properly uninstalled could leave a bit of ‘mess’ in the registry, and that’s what ‘cleaning’ gets rid of. What does a Registry Clean from CClean do then?

I know that none of you will have slept, worrying about whether I got this fixed…

I did. It was the ABBYY Fine Reader add-in causing problems. Of course it was. I’m not sure why that wsn’t the first thing I checked…

Disabled add-in (in fact, uninstalled ABBYY Fine Reader, it was some bundled OCR thing that came with an old printer/scanner), all is well.

You can all breathe easy.

Simples.

I can’t believe we didn’t suggest that woudl be the solution before.

Me neither. Some ****ing help you lot were 😉