The default behavior for opening Excel for Mac 2011 is the display All Templates option of the Excel Workbook Gallery. You can also display the Templates Gallery by choosing File→New from Template from the menu bar or by pressing Command-Shift-P.
The first template in the All category is Excel Workbook, the template that you use to start a new, blank workbook. The rest of the templates are categorized and searchable, so you can browse or search to find a template to use or customize. Other Excel Workbook Gallery tools are as follows:
How to Set Default Fonts for New Workbooks in Excel. You can set a default font/size to be used by default when creating new workbooks in Excel. These settings can be accessed from the 'General' section of the (on Mac) or (on Windows).
- Show/Hide Right Pane: Choose to show or hide the Template preview.
- Templates list
- All: Displays all templates stored on your computer.
- My Templates: Displays templates you saved in the My Templates folder, specified in Excel’s preferences.
- Built-In Templates: Many categories of built-in templates are included with Office such as those for Time Management, Business Essentials, Personal Finance, and so on.
- Online Templates: Click the disclosure triangle next to Templates to hide the local templates. Then click the disclosure triangle next to Online Templates to display the many categories of online templates. This feature requires a live Internet connection, and is new for Office 2011.
- Search: By default, this text box searches template names and keywords of local templates. You can also search online templates if the online disclosure triangle has been activated. When one of the Recent Workbook time frames is selected, this text box searches Recent Workbooks instead of templates.
- Preview and Navigation: Displays a preview of the template selected in the larger pane. If the template has multiple pages, click the navigation arrows to scroll through the template.
- Recent Workbooks: Up to one month’s worth of recently opened workbooks are available. You can show all, or filter by Today, Yesterday, Past Week, or Past Month. When any Recent Workbook option is selected, Search works on Recent Workbooks instead of local templates.
- Show/Hide Recent Workbooks: This toggle button displays or hides this section of the gallery.
- Don’t Show This When Opening Excel: When checked, the Excel Workbook Gallery will not display when Excel is opened. You can still access it by choosing the File→New from Template.
- Size: Drag the slider left and right to change the size of previews in the larger pane. Click the icon on the left end to choose the smallest size. Choose the icon on the right end of the slider to choose the largest.
- Cancel: If you just opened Excel, clicking Cancel takes you to a new, blank Excel Workbook. If Excel was already running when you opened the Excel Workbook Gallery, clicking Cancel closes the gallery without opening a workbook.
- Choose: Opens the selected template in Excel.
by Martin Brinkmann on November 30, 2017 in Misc, Tutorials - Last Update: January 04, 2018 - 22 comments
For about a week now, I experienced an issue when double-clicking on Excel spreadsheets to load them in Microsoft Excel 2016. Excel would open as expected, but instead of loading the selected spreadsheet, the application opened a blank document instead.
More precisely, it did not open a spreadsheet at all, not even a blank one, but displayed no document in its interface.
I tried different documents stored in different locations, and opening a document after loading one manually, but all efforts returned the grayish no-document loaded interface. Most interface options are disabled in that mode on top of that.
Excel functioned normally afterwards. I could drag and drop spreadsheets, even the one that Excel 2016 would not open, and it would display fine, and file load operations worked as well.
It was clear that 'something' was blocking the selected document from being loaded correctly.
Fix Excel 2016 opening a blank document
As is the case with troubleshooting, there is no single fits-it-all solution available. This guide lists multiple solutions. I suggest you apply one after the other, and check each time you made a change whether it resolved the blank document issue in Excel 2016.
The solutions are sorted by simplicity and likeliness.
Option 1: Enable DDE
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is not a new feature, as it was introduced by Microsoft in Windows 2.0 back in 1987. It has been superseded largely by other features, but it is still a part of any version of Windows.
The main functionality of DDE is the sharing of data between Windows programs. When users double-click on an Excel spreadsheet document in Explorer for instance, a DDE message is sent to Excel provided that Excel is the associated with the file type.
If DDE is disabled in Excel, Excel won't open spreadsheets that you double-click in Explorer, even if it is the default file handler.
Here is how you check the setting:
- Start Microsoft Excel.
- Select File > Options.
- Switch to the Advanced section.
- Locate the General group of preferences on the page that opens. You find it near the end of the page.
- Make sure that 'Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is not checked. If it is, remove the checkmark and select ok.
Option 2: Hide/unhide, and fullscreen
These two options are rather easy to check. You can hide Excel documents in Excel, and when you do, all you see is a blank document panel instead of the actual spreadsheet document.
To check this, select View from the menu, and make sure the 'unhide' option under Window is not enabled.
You may also want to try and enable fullscreen mode with a click on the Excel window icon, and return to regular mode afterwards.
Option 3: Check add-ins
Excel add-ins may interfere with the loading of documents. You can check whether that is the case in the following way:
- Select File > Options to open the Excel options.
- Select Add-ins from the sidebar panel.
- Check any active add-in listed on the past. You may want to disable those to test whether they are responsible for the blank document issue. You can enable them again if they are not.
Option 4: Disable hardware acceleration
![New New](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125869674/852687310.png)
This is another option that is easy to check.
- Select File > Options.
- Load the Advanced options page.
- Scroll down until you come to the Display Group. Locate 'disable hardware graphics acceleration', and check the preference.
Option 5: Reset file associations
Resetting Excel's file associations is another fix that may work for you. How you do that depends on the operating system that you run.
Windows 7
- Select Start > Control Panel.
- Click on Default Programs.
- Select 'Associate a file type or protocol with a specific program'.
- Select Microsoft Excel Worksheet, and then change program.
- Under Recommended Programs, select Microsoft Excel. If it is not listed, use browser to find and pick excel.exe.
Windows 8 and 10
- Open Start, type Control Panel and load the result.
- Select Default Programs, and then Set your default programs.
- Click Excel, and select choose default for this program.
- Select All on Set Program Associations and click Save.
Option 6: Repair Office
Microsoft Office 2016 comes with two repair options. The first runs a local (quick) repair attempt, the second an online repair. Please note that you may be asked to re-enter the Office product ID and authenticate the product again if you run an online Office repair.
I suggest you start with the quick repair and see if it resolves the document loading issue in Excel. If it does not, you may try the online repair option, but remember to have your product key at hand when you do as you may need it.
Closing Words
There are a couple of other things admins and users may try to resolve the issue. One is to find out if any recent software installation or update of Windows happened around the same time the issue started.
Fix Excel 2016 opening a blank document
Description
The tutorial provides Microsoft Office users and administrators with methods on fixing Excel if spreadsheets are not opened correctly anymore.
Author
Ghacks Technology News
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