Excel for Mac keeps trying to recover autosaved files

When I open Excel for Mac it always starts with a message

Excel saved changes to the file before the application quit unexpectedly.

It then prompts me to open the last saved version (even though last Excel session ended normally). When I click on Open, no previous sheet opens, it presents me with the window to select a blank sheet or to start from a number of existing templates.

Somehow it is hung up thinking the previous session was corrupted, the file(s) got autosaved and tries to open the autosaved version on every start. How can I solve this?

Iyad

Posted 2018-01-02T15:49:09.763

Reputation: 71

Answers

If you have Office 2016 go to /Users/[your User directory name]/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office and delete MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg file. Just in case make sure you have your MS ID or Office 365 subscription info.

Roman

Posted 2018-01-02T15:49:09.763

Reputation: 131

Just try it and you will see.. – Roman – 2018-04-04T08:27:49.597

4Answers need to include context and information besides the steps of the fix. You have instructed someone to delete their registration information, which is not something one would assume would be related to crashes with the symptoms described in OP. Therefore it falls to you to include with your answer the WHY, or at least the evidence for the veracity of your claimed solution. – music2myear – 2018-04-04T15:27:25.910

3I agree that more context would be nice but I'm going to upvote just because it was the one thing that solved this problem for me, when deleting in all the usual Users/my_name/Library/Containers/... places did not. – Carlos P – 2018-04-24T11:32:42.147

Mac being *nix we can use ~ to represent the user's home folder.

Thus the most accurate answer is: Open Finder > Go > Go to Folder... and type:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office

Presssing Go opens a folder. Find and delete the file MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg.

In my case this resolved the problem and did not require me to re-license. It also saved over 600MB of disc space :)

ba296

Posted 2018-01-02T15:49:09.763

Reputation: 11

As a (less scary) variant on Roman’s answer, instead of deleting the original registration file, I simply moved it to break the link. This immediately fixed my issue within Excel, where the software was "remembering" and recommending a previous auto-save at each new session. I also signed out, and then signed back in, which created a new Registration file.

P.S. I am a Mac user, and I have an Office 365 subscription.

mcconnelljk

Posted 2018-01-02T15:49:09.763

Reputation: 1

I have an alternative suggestion but around the same thing. Because I am a scardy cat - i took the file listed above: /Users/[your User directory name]/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office and delete MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg file and moved it to the desktop. It was large 254 MB. I have loaded and unloaded multiple times so now I think its OK. Then if you have an issue you can move it back to the same location and then deal with the issue as its not a show stopper- just really annoying. Hope this helps

Professor Sabena

Posted 2018-01-02T15:49:09.763

Reputation: 1

-1

Office autosave files are under /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery, check if anything's in that directory, or try deleting it.

trapezoid

Posted 2018-01-02T15:49:09.763

Reputation: 177