Personal.xls Locked

[rob nobel]

Excel locked and after I restarted it the mesage "Personal.xls is locked for
editing" came up which gives options to "Read only", "Notify" or "Cancel".
Is there a way to restore Excel without shutting down the computer and
restarting?
Rob

 

[BrianB]

It is possible that your personal.xls has become corrupted. You do no
say what you did at the message. I would have selected "Read Only
which would possibly allow Save As some new name to perhaps recover it
contents.

To get Excel running again, go to your XLSTART folder with fil
Explorer and move any files there to another folder. You should then b
able to open Excel and try to open the file from where you put it

 

[Jon Peltier]

Rob -

Here's a couple things you could try:

1. Look in your Task List (Ctrl-Alt-Del...) for a hidden instance of
excel.exe, which would have Personal.xls open and locked for editing.

2. Clear out the temp directory. Excel (& Office) stick lots of temp
files in there, and sometimes they interfere with the application after
a crash.

- Jon

 

[rob nobel]

Thanks Jon,
I regularly clean out the temp folder and tried to do that on this occassion
but certain files could not be deleted until after I rebooted. I will try
your (Ctrl-Alt-Del...) suggestion for the next time this should happen.
Rob

 

[rob nobel]

Thanks Brian for that suggestion. I'll have a go at these next time this
problem should occur. (Only place I didn't look was the XLSTART folder
which I'd forgotten about.) I don't think it's a matter of corruption as
Excel frees itself up once I reboot. (Only happens after a crash and excel
locks up.)
Rob

 

[rob nobel]

Hi Jon,
Just to let you know that it did happen again and doing your steps in that
order worked great!
Thanks heaps!
Rob