Trying to start a file upon opening Excel 2013 using XLSTART

Question

How do I get excel to load an certain file using xlStart.

I found C:\Users\mdowney\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

Added the file and its not working.

Answer 1

There are a couple things that might cause your setup to fail. Just using Book.xlsx or Sheet.xlsx in your XLSTART folder should work just fine (or .xlxm if you're using macros). The problem with this approach is that since .xlsx is not a template format, whenever you press CTRL-S to save the file, you're overwriting the file in XLSTART folder, which is probably not what you want.

So you want to instead use the template format, .xltx, for either Book or Sheet template. Or, in your case the macro-enabled equivalent, .xltm. There's a catch in at least Excel 2013 though: if your Excel version is not English, this will not work. You need to instead name the file as whatever your Excel saves new workbooks by default, omitting the number. So for example in the Finnish version if I save a new workbook, it will be named "Työkirja1.xlsx", so the template file should be called "Työkirja.xltx" in order for Excel to recognize and use it.

Another thing that can cause the files in XLSTART to not work in Excel 2013 is if you have another template file in the other XLSTART folder, which is usually something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\XLSTART. Check that there's nothing there if the template doesn't work.

Also by default Excel 2013 shows that Start Screen whenever you open Excel, so you need to disable that by going to Settings -> General -> "Show Start Screen when Excel starts" and untick the box.