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Excel is showing blank pages

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Pc handyman services client using Office 365 Home or BusinessYou know the expression “The shoemaker’s wife has no shoes?” Well, that adage definitely applies to computer repair. I was working on my own computer this week and discovered that none of my spreadsheets were opening. Typically. when something like that happens it is reasonable to assume the problem is the fault of Office 365. As much as I use the program and assist my clients with that software, Microsoft Office has some bloaty tendencies. It feels like Office is way too big, needs to be on the web, and uses way too many resources. Microsoft explained this issue in a forum which you can read here

Below are excellent instructions. In the business, we search the internet often to get clues on how to solve a problem that doesn’t come up regularly. I know it feels like you are stranded on a digital desert island and you are the only one on earth that is having the same problem. Luckily, that is not the case and somewhere there was someone who had a problem similar to your own. It might not be the exact same problem (the reason for that has something to do with Windows 10’s 50-60 million lines of code intermingling with the codebases of any program you install on the machine, it’s a miracle more problems don’t occur. Below are some tips to consider when you are faced with blank screens in Excel. My problem had to do with an internet issue slowing down communication between my machine and OneDrive. Don’t get me started on AT&T and slow connections, throttling etc. While these instructions didn’t help me, they could possibly help you.

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 It has been superseded largely by other features, but it is still a part of any version of Windows.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:

  1. Start Microsoft Excel.

  2. Select File > Options.

  3. Switch to the Advanced section.

  4. Locate the General group of preferences on the page that opens. You find it near the end of the page.

  5. Make sure that “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is not checked. If it is, remove the checkmark and select ok.


Tags

computer repair, Excel, Office 365


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