Big Mess... Excel won't even open. Any help greatly appreciated

[abuchanan]

Hi guys,

You folks have helped me a lot in the pass, and hope someone can pass along some wisdom.

I'm working on a MacBook Air which came with the microsoft office package installed. I work extensively in excel (and a lot in Powerpoint), and I also use Google and Google Drive. Like a fool, I decided 10 months ago to save space on my local drive, I would move the office applications over to Google drive and run from there. It is a little slower opening, but everything works fine... or did up until this week!

Google decided to go to two step verification, and did some "things" to google drive, and all of a sudden I can no longer even open excel. I can click on it like before, and it acts like it's opening (I don't get any errors or anything) -- just nothing happens. I get the color wheel spinning a little while (30 seconds or so), and I can see the excel icon "bounce" in the ribbon... and then it stops bouncing like it opened. (In other words, it use to spin a little, bounce, and actually open... now I get the same process, but it just stops, doesn't open, no error message, no nothing!)

I tried to open powerpoint, and it at least opened (but gave me the splash screen like it was the first time I ever opened it...). Same with Word... like I never opened it... but both of them did open at least! I tried a few things... created another admin account, tried to open... nothing... I tried moving excel back over to the app folder on my local drive... nothing... both times, it still does same thing... acts like it opens, but does nothing.

I was going to try to just restore excel and see if that helped, but I don't even know how to do that. When I googled it, all I could find was how to restore excel files... not the entire program. (Plus, I'm thinking there is just some type of pointer that is messed up.)

I just went to a few of my excel files and tried to open them, but got the same results... acts like it opens, but doesn't. I even tried opening a few of my excel files with google sheets (that worked, but weird results... it was like the files were from months ago...). As a test, I sent a few of my files to my son to see if he could open them on his windows pc... no problems. They opened just like they should. So not sure how to even fix this. At a loss.

Anyone have any ideas? Sure would appreciate it. I have a small business, and all of my finance files are in excel, and I can't open any of them! I can't even open the backups, because excel just won't work!

Thanks much to anyone that has an idea!!!!

 

[earthworm]

Solution 1 : If you have an excel in share drive that wont be any issue . you can fix your office(uninstall / re-install) on pc and retry
Solution 2 : Try saving the file on your pc and then open
Solution 3 : Try saving the file on your pc and then open in notepad
Solution 4 : Check if the file .extension if its valid or maybe hijacked with some sort of ransomware where extension is suspicious example .xlsx is now apearing as .xls.tru etc

 

[abuchanan]

Thanks for the ideas...

1. I only have the copy of excel that is on my google drive. I already tried to move it back to my local drive, and it still won't open. Can I just copy it and move to my app file on my pc? That's what I did. If I need to "install" it, how do I do that? Is there an installation program I have to run? When I bought the PC, office was already installed on my local drive. I just moved the three apps, (excel, pp, word) over to the google drive. It all worked fine until this mess....
2. Not sure what you are suggesting. The individual excel files I have don't seem to be the problem. They will open on my son's pc (because he can open excel). I can't even open excel to open the files. (Hope that makes sense!). As far as saving the file on my pc... if you're talking about putting the excel program back on my pc, I tried that. (See #1)
3. Again, I'm not really wanting to open a file. I want to get excel to work. (granted I need to get to my finance files, but if it comes to it, I can open on my son's pc)
4. The files are all as they were... they all have the correct extension. Again, I believe you're misunderstanding... the excel files are not the problem. It is the excel program. Files work fine (when they are on a pc that can actually open the excel program.)

Thanks

 

[earthworm]

If the file are opening on son pc then it's simple . Sir get the office program reinstall from scratch and the then open file after saving on local drive. Don't worry the issue seems to be in office program on your PC only.