Author: Zeynep

Ever wondered why Excel pops up on the startup screen every time you sign in to your computer? It can be due to various reasons, including Windows default settings, Excel file associations, or even user preferences.

Even though this setting is useful for some users as it allows them to begin working from where they left off, it might be unnecessary or a cause of irritation for most people.

In this guide, we will investigate all the reasons in depth as to why Excel opens up on startup and how you can stop this configuration. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

Why Does Excel Open on Startup?

Let’s look into the reasons that might be causing your Excel application to open up on startup.

Windows Automatic Setup

If you use Windows 10, you are more likely to face this problem. Windows 10 recently launched a new feature that automatically opens up the apps that were being used on the computer in the last session.

This means if you were using MS Office apps like Excel or Word previously, Windows will open it for you automatically when you start your computer.

Windows normally has this feature turned off by default, so if Excel opens up due to Windows settings, it must be because someone you share the your computer with has turned it on using your account.

Not Shutting Excel Off Properly

Often we overlook the correct procedure of closing our applications and devices due to time constraints. If you were working on Excel in the last session and did not close the application properly, it is possible that Excel opened on the startup due to that.

Macros Or Excel Add-ins

If you have any add-ins or macros added, your Excel application might be showing up because of that. Wonder how?

If you have installed an add-in that is set to execute on startup, Excel will launch on the startup screen to run these add-ins. These are custom functionalities and can easily be modified in the application.

Startup Application

If you use Windows, it is possible that an application or service is running in the background that is causing Excel to launch on the startup screen. This can be fixed by checking the applications that are set to launch under the Startup tab in Task Manager.

Default Program

Another reason why Excel may open up on the startup screen is if you access particular file types immediately after startup while Excel is set as the default app for these file types. These can be XLSX, CSV, XLM, or others. Opening the associated files will open Excel as well.

User Preferences

Excel offers a feature that lets you launch specific files automatically at startup. This makes working convenient for people who want to begin working as soon as they log in to their computer.

This might be the case if you share your computer with another person, and they might have enabled this feature without your knowledge. Before you do anything to disable this feature, make sure to let them know.

Auto-Recover

MS Excel might pop up on startup if you have enabled the Auto-Recover feature of Excel. It will launch the app to save any files that you were working on during the last session and were not saved to the computer.

How to Stop Excel From Launching on a Startup?

If you don’t want Excel to pop up on the startup screen, you can stop that from happening. We have explained all the techniques below that will help you stop Excel from opening on startup.

Reset the Windows Settings

If Excel opens up on your startup screen due to Windows default app reopening settings, you can easily turn it off.

To do that,

1. Press the Windows key on your keyboard or click on the Windows icon at the bottom left corner.
2. Click on the Settings icon under START.

3. The Settings landing page will appear.
4. Select Accounts > Sign–in options.

5. Scroll down and turn off the “Automatically save my restart-able apps when I sign out and restart them after I sign in” option under Restart apps.
6. Under Privacy, toggle the “Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device and reopen my apps after an update or restart” option.

Now that you’ve updated the settings, Windows will not open Excel or your last-used application on startup until you toggle the setting again. Pretty cool, right?

COMMENT

The Restart Apps option lets you control if you want the previously opened application to appear on startup or not. The Privacy option, on the other hand, uses your sign-in information to reopen the apps that were open in the previous session before a system update or restart.

Both these apps are user-specific and apply to an individual account. This means if two people use a computer, and person A toggles the Restart Apps option, Windows will reopen the previous applications only for person A when he logs in.

It will in no way affect the experience of person B. Both options are turned off by default in Windows so you can have full control over your privacy.

Close Excel Using Task Manager

If Excel pops up on your launch screen because you didn’t shut it down properly in the last session, here’s how you can fix it in seconds.

To do that.

1. Move your cursor down to the Task Manager (the bar at the bottom of the screen containing icons like File Explorer and Chrome, etc.)
2. Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager from the options.

3. A small Task Manager dialog box will appear on the screen.

4. Select Excel from the list of apps open on the screen.

5. Click on the End task button given at the bottom

And it’s done! Task Manager will shut down the Excel app instantly.

Easy, right?

Disable Excel Add-ins

MS Excel might be popping up on your startup screen if you have set a certain add-in to launch on the startup screen. This method is slightly more time taking than the ones we saw above, but it is just as effective.

Curious to know how? Read on.

To disable Excel add-ins,

1. Go to Excel and launch the application.
2. Click on File from the ribbon and select Options.

The Excel Options dialog box will appear on the screen.

3. Click on Add–ins from the options.
4. Next to Manage, select the type of Add-ins you want to disable, Excel or COM add-ins, and press Go.

5. A small Add-ins dialog box will appear.
6. Checkmark the add-ins you want to disable and press Ok.

7. Close Excel and launch it again to apply the changes.

Ta-da, it’s done. The selected add-in is now disabled and will not cause Excel to open up on the startup screen anymore.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Disable Startup Application

It is possible that MS Excel might be popping up on your screen because of a certain application or service running in your background. But how do you know which application is the cause of this unprompted opening?

Let’s find out below.

1. Move your cursor to the taskbar and right-click it.
2. Select Task Manager from the options.

3. The Task Manager dialog box will appear.
4. Click on More Options at the bottom.

A number of tabs will appear on the dialog box.

5. Select the Startup tab from above.

6. Check all the apps to see which one is causing Excel to launch on Startup.
7. To disable any app, just select it and press the Disable button given at the bottom.

The selected app will be disabled to run on the startup of the computer, hence closing the abrupt launch of Excel.

There, done and dusted!

Remove Excel as Default Program

If you open a file with an extension of CSV, XLSX, or others, they will launch Excel if it is set as the default program for accessing such file types. An easy way to fix this is to change the default program for opening certain file types.

Let’s see how to do that below.

1. Find the file that you want to change the default program for.
2. Right-click the file, and from the drop-down menu, select Open with.
3. Click on Choose Another App.

4. A small dialog box will appear.
5. Click on More Apps.

A couple more applications will pop up in the dialog box.

6. Select the application you want to set as your default program.
7. Click on the “Always use this app to open .xlsx files.”
8. Press Ok.

The selected application will now become the default program for that file type and will open whenever you access a similar file type. This means Excel will not pop open when you launch this file type.

TIP!

If you ever want to change the default program settings back to Excel, use the same process as above. Right-click the file > Open with > Excel, and it's done.

Pretty cool, no?

Change User Preferences

If you think another user besides you has set certain files in Excel to open at startup, worry not – you can change this setting. But before that, make sure to inform the person who shares your computer.

To changes user preferences of opening Excel at startup,

1. Go to Excel
2.  Click on File from the ribbon > Options.

3. Select Advanced from the options.
4. Scroll down to the bottom.
5. Under General, check if there is any path entry in the “At startup, open all files in” bar.

6. If there is any entry, select it and press the Backspace key on your keyboard.

This will delete the path of the file that Excel was set to open on startup. Restart Excel and boom! Excel will now not open up when you start your computer.

Turn Off Excel Auto Recover Feature

If MS Excel appears on your startup screen to recover an unsaved file from the last session, then this method is for you. All you need to do is turn off the Auto Recover feature of Excel.

To do that,

1. Launch Excel.
2. Go to File from the ribbon > Options.

3. Select Save from the options.
4. Under Save Workbooks, uncheck the option Save AutoRecover information every ___ minutes.

5. Press Ok.

This will turn off the AutoRecover feature, hence stopping Excel from opening up after the last session.

Conclusion

In this guide, we saw all the reasons why Excel may open up on the startup screen and how you can stop it. Some reasons include user preferences, add-ins, and system settings, while solutions include turning off add-ins, unchecking the sign-in options, removing the directory path, and more.

The most common reason is not shutting Excel off properly before logging out.

Did you find out what error was causing Excel to open on your startup screen? If not, then what are you waiting for?

Try all the methods above and see which one fits your situation best.

One of the amazing applications of Excel is data gathering. Excel can be used as a form or a questionnaire. After you gather some statistics, you can perform powerful analysis. When gathering data, you may enforce some limitations, such as the number of characters (character length) in a cell.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to limit character length in a cell in Excel.

Limit Character Length

We can easily limit character length in Excel using Data Validation. Data Validation enables controlling/validating the type or characteristic of data entered in a cell. In this case, the feature that we’ll control is text length.

Let’s do it!

Step 1: Go to the Data tab in Excel.

Step 2: Select the cell you want to limit, and click on the Data Validation icon in the Data Tools part of the Excel ribbon.

The Data Validation window will open.

Step 3: In the Data Validation window, click on the dropdown menu under “Allow:”, and select “Text length”.

Step 4: Click on the dropdown menu under “Data:” and select “less than or equal to” if you want to set a maximum number of characters.

This will allow you to limit the number of characters to be less than or equal to a specified number.

Step 5: Type the maximum number of characters inside the “Maximum:” text box, and click OK.

Now the cell looks like a regular Excel cell, and you can enter anything you want:

When you exceed the number of maximum characters, a pop-up error will appear, indicating you have violated the data validation restrictions of the cell:

You can press Retry and enter text that has less than 10 characters.

Using the same steps, you can also select a minimum text length using the “greater than or equal to” setting. You can also set a minimum and maximum text length using the “between” setting:

This way, gathering data (or unsorting data included) in Excel is much more controlled.

In this tutorial, we learned how to limit character length in a cell in Excel using the Data Validation tool. Nice job!

Now that you know about limiting character length, limit the placement of these characters in the cells.

Headers and footers are extremely important elements of Excel that let you add essential information like page number, company name, phone number, and other stuff to your workbook.

It’s easy to add headers and footers in Excel, but do you know how to get rid of them? You might need to remove headers to make the worksheet look neater and more compact or you simply need to focus on the actual data without having to account for other petty things.

Luckily, Excel provides a variety of ways that you can use to remove headers and footers. We have explained each method in great detail below. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

How to Find Header and Footer in Excel?

To remove headers and footers in Excel, you first need to know where to find them. Let’s see a quick demo of how to find and display headers and footers.

You won’t be able to see headers and footers on the home page of Excel. That’s because Excel doesn’t show headers in the normal workbook view.

So how do we add and see them? We enable them and change the view of the worksheet.

To do that,

1. Go to the Page Layout tab.
2.  Under the Sheet Options heading, checkmark View if you haven’t already.
3.  If you want to make changes to the text or alignment, right-click the small arrow at the bottom right corner of the section.

4. The Page Setup dialog box will appear.
5. Go to the Header/Footer tab.
6. Enter a particular text using the custom header or footer feature or change alignment and scaling using the checkmarks below.

7. Click Ok.

Now, to view the header and footer,

1. Go to the View tab.
2. Under the Workbook Views heading, select Page Layout.

3. Your worksheet layout will change, and the header will appear on your screen.

And it’s done. Easy, no?

#1 Use the Insert Tab

Removing the header and footer from the Insert tab is extremely easy and takes less than ten seconds.

Want to know how? Let’s see below.

To remove the header,

1. Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon.
2. Click on Text at the end of the ribbon.
3. Select Header and Footer from the dropdown.

4. This will change the view of the worksheet to Page Layout.
5. You can see the header and footer on the screen.

6. Select any part of the header and press the Delete or Backspace key on your keyboard.
7. Do the same with footer – select it and then press the Backspace key.

Click somewhere on your screen to deselect the selection, and it’s done. The header or footer will be removed from your screen.

How quick was that?

Other things that you can do with the help of the Insert tab include:

#2 Use a Status Bar

You can also delete the header and footer in your Excel sheet using the Status bar. This method is the fastest of all and takes no time.

If you don’t know what the status bar is, it’s the small bar that appears at the bottom of your worksheet and contains the Zoom bar.

To remove the header and footer,

1. Go to the Status bar.
2.  Click on the Page Layout icon (second one) on the bar.

3. This will change the view of the worksheet to page layout.
4. Select the header on the worksheet and press the Delete or backspace key on your keyboard.

And it’s done. The header will be removed from the screen instantly.

Pretty easy, no?

#3 Use the Page Layout Tab

Let’s now see how to remove the header and footer in Excel using the Page Layout tab.

Say, we have the following worksheet with a header and footer.

To remove it,

1. Go to the Page Layout tab on the ribbon.
2. Under the Page Setup heading, click on the small arrow at the bottom right corner of the section.

3. This will open the Page Setup dialog box.
4. Select the Header/Footer tab from the window.
5. In the Header and Footer area, select none from the options for both.

6. Click Ok.

This will remove the header and footer from your worksheet in one go.

Easy, right?

#4 Use the Print Options

You can also remove headers and footers from your worksheet using the Print feature of Excel while printing.

This can be handy if you’re also in the process of printing with gridlines.

To do that,

1. Go to the File tab from the ribbon.
2. Select Print from the options.
3. Click on Page Setup at the bottom of the screen.

The Page Setup dialog box will appear. It can be used to change the appearance of your worksheet, like margins, size, orientation, etc.

4. Click on the Header/Footer tab in the window.
5. In the Header and Footer bar, select none.

6. Click Ok.

The header and footer will be removed from the worksheet just like that.

How easy is that? Try it now!

#5 Use the View Tab

Another easy way to remove the header and footer is by using the View tab.

Want to see how? Read on.

Say, we have the following set of data with a header.

To remove these,

1. Select the View tab from the ribbon.
2.  Click on the Page Layout option under the heading of Workbook Views.

3. This will change the view of the worksheet to Page Layout, where you can see the header and footer on the worksheet.
4. Select any header and press Backspace or Delete.

The selected header will be deleted.

5. Select the footer and press Backspace.

The footer will also be deleted.

Pretty clean, no? Try doing it on your computer.

#6 VBA Code

Removing the header and footer using VBA code is the quickest and most fun method. All you need to do is write a code, and the headers and footers will be deleted automatically.

This is also a method you can use when moving a chart to a new sheet.

Let’s see how to do that below.

1. To open the VBA window, press Alt + F11 on the keyboard.
2.  The dialog box will appear.
3.  On the menu bar, go to the Insert tab.
4.  From the options, select Module.

This will open the window where you will enter the code.

Sub RemoveHeadersFooters()

    Dim was As Worksheet

    Dim sht As Object

    ' Loop through all worksheets in the active workbook

    For Each was In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets

        Set sht = ws.PageSetup

        ' Clear headers and footers

        sht.LeftHeader = ""

        sht.CenterHeader = ""

        sht.RightHeader = ""

        sht.LeftFooter = ""

        sht.CenterFooter = ""

        sht.RightFooter = ""

    Next ws

End Sub

5. Copy and paste the above code into the Module2 window.

6. Press F5 on your keyboard to run the code or select the Run option from the menu bar.

This will remove all the headers and footers in the entire workbook.

COMMENT

The VBA code written above uses a 'RemoveHeadersFooters' sub-procedure. The For loop checks through each worksheet for headers and footers in the workbook. It uses the Header and Footer properties to clear them out, after which the sub-procedure ends.

Conclusion

All in all, removing headers and footers in Excel is a super easy and quick process. This guide explains different methods you can use to clear out your worksheet of headers and footers.

You can try using the Insert tab method or the Page Layout method; each is just as quick. Our favorite technique has to be using the VBA code – the process is fun, and the headers go away as soon as you run the code on the VBA editor.

Have you decided on your favorite method of removing footers? If not, then what are you waiting for? Try each technique now and choose the one that suits you best.

This tutorial deals with the clipboard problems posed by Excel. These problems occur when you try to copy and paste between different office programs.

What does this problem look like?

This message appears when a background program is using the clipboard.

Every Microsoft Office program has a built-in clipboard that will help you copy and paste information across Office programs. You can also copy information from an office program (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) to another program.

However, the clipboard error reads as follows:

“There’s a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook.”

Occurs when users try to copy and paste something while another external program is using the clipboard in the background.

With Excel posing this error, you’d be able to copy (copy the formatting included) and paste stuff within your active workbook but copying/pasting across other programs would be restricted for a while.

Not to worry – that’s a very nominal problem, and there are various methods you can use to fix it.

In this tutorial, we will discuss all the possible solutions to fix this problem. So let’s dive right in.

How to Fix Problems With the Clipboard in Excel

There can be several ways to solve the clipboard problem in Excel. We have listed down all the methods that will help you resolve the Excel clipboard problems.

You can try these methods in a sequential order to see which one helps.

Clear Excel Clipboard Memory

Often when you’re copying and pasting heaps of information, the clipboard might be overburdened by the copied information.

When tons of content are copied into the clipboard, you can expect Excel to show the clipboard error message. If that’s the case, clearing up the clipboard will help the situation.

Follow the steps below to clear up the clipboard memory of Excel.

1. Go to the Home Tab > Clipboard Group > Arrow at the right bottom.

Clicking on this button will launch the Clipboard pane to the left side of your spreadsheet as follows:

It would have the list of all the items that you previously copied.

2. Click on the Clear All button at the top.

Everything from the clipboard will now be deleted, and the “Clipboard empty” message will be displayed as follows.

You can now re-copy and paste (whatever you wanted to copy/paste) to see if the clipboard now works rightly. How cool is that?

Disable the Problematic Plug-ins

Some of the times, we have some Excel Add-ins working in the background that disable certain functions of Excel. Even otherwise, such additional plug-ins often affect the performance of Excel.

If this is the cause of your Excel clipboard not working, you will have to identify the problematic add-in and put it to a halt.

Here’s how you can identify the problematic add-in in Excel and deactivate it.

1. Go to the File Tab > Options.

This will launch the Options window as follows.

2. In the Options window, from the pane on the left, select Add-ins.

From the Add-ins window, you can see which Add-ins are currently active in your workbook.

3. In the Add-ins window, next to manage, click on the button Go.

The Add-ins window will pop up on the screen that shows the add-ins available. The add-ins running in your Excel are the ones that are tick-marked.

Now, to identify if the add-ins are causing the problem, you can deactivate all the Add-ins at once and see if the Clipboard works.

Once established that the clipboard is running into problems due to one or more add-ins, you can deactivate the Add-ins one after another to identify the particular add-in causing the problem.

4. Disable (uncheck) all the Add-ins and press the Go button to run Excel without Add-ins.

5. Now close this workbook and restart Excel.

That should fix the error and you can now copy items to your clipboard easily.

Launch Excel in Safe Mode

If you find it arduous to deactivate add-ins individually or altogether, you can try this method instead.

Launch Excel in safe mode and disable all the add-ins. Most of the time, it’s the add-ins that restrict users from copying/pasting. Disabling such add-ins can therefore fix the issue.

Here’s how you can launch Excel in safe mode to disable all the add-ins:

1. Press the Window button + R key.

This launches the Run command as follows:

2. Within the Run command, type in the following command.

excel /safe

3. Click on “Okay”.
4. Launch Microsoft Excel.
5. Go to the File Tab > Options.

This will launch the Options window as follows.

6. In the Options window, from the pane on the left, select Add-ins.

7. In the Add-ins window, next to manage, select “COM Add-ins.”
8. Click on the button Go.

This time the COM Add-ins window will launch, showing all the available COM Add-ins.

9. Uncheck them all and click Okay to save your changes.
10. Restart Excel to make sure the changes you’ve made are saved.

If Add-ins were the root cause of your Clipboard problems, you’ll likely not see them now. The problem has been fixed and you can now easily use your clipboard.

Repair / Reinstall Microsoft Excel

After you’ve tried all the methods above, and if none of them has worked for you so far – don’t worry; here’s another method to help you get through this problem.

If, after trying everything above, you are still facing the “There’s a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook” error, your MS Office is probably broken.

This is again when some third-party Add-ins are interrupting the functionality of Excel. To help this problem, you may consider repairing it.

Here’s how you can repair MS Excel on your PC to solve the Clipboard problem.

1. Go to the Start button > Settings > Apps.

2. Scroll down the list of Apps to find Microsoft Office Suite.

3. Click on the Modify button.

This will launch the following dialog box on your screen.

4. Select Quick Repair (or Online Repair) and press the Repair button.

TIP!

Online Repair will usually take longer than Quick Repair. However, it is more effective in solving the subject problem.

Repairing your MS Excel (or sometimes even updating it) is likely to solve the aforesaid problem.

However, if even after trying all the methods above, particularly repairing MS Office, the Clipboard problem is not fixed, you might need a different solution.

In this case, it might be advisable to uninstall and reinstall MS Excel. Doing so will set back all the settings to default, and the clipboard problem will likely be solved.

COMMENT

Uninstalling and reinstalling MS Office will be a time-consuming job. Hence, do not try doing this unless you've tried all the above methods.

To uninstall MS Office, follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Start button > Settings > Apps.
2. Scroll down the list of Apps to find Microsoft Office Suite.

3. Click on the Uninstall button.
4. Agree to any prompts that come next to initiate the uninstallation process.
5. Once uninstalled, reinstall it again to have all the default settings restored.

Copying and pasting within Excel and across MS Office apps should now be seamless.

Conclusion

For a regular Excel user, copying and pasting data across the same workbook and multiple Office programs is one of the most common jobs. You’d have to do those tens of times a day.

With that being said, Excel clipboard posing errors can be a big problem. It will hamper your jobs, including the copying of filenames, wastes a lot of time, and might also result in loss of data.

Until now, we have discussed a variety of methods that you can use to solve the Clipboard problem in Excel.

Try applying them in sequential order, and you will have your copying / pasting issues fixed soon.