Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 11, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Fred has noticed a change in how his Excel works, and it is not clear what is going on. All of a sudden his Personal.xls workbook no longer loads automatically when Excel starts. Fred didn't change anything; the file just started not loading. He can open the workbook manually, and everything works fine.
There are a couple of things that can be tried to get operations back to normal. First, examine your Personal.xls file when you open it manually. Look specifically at the title bar; if it indicates that the file is read-only, then you may want to get out of Excel and use Windows to remove the read-only attribute from the Personal.xls file. This may solve the problem, but it may not. (You'll know the next time you start Excel.)
The other possibility is that, somehow, the location of where Excel expects Personal.xls to be located has changed, or possibly the file has become corrupted in some manner. Try these general steps:
These steps create a brand new Personal.xls file, in whatever location Excel expects it to be located. You can, in the workbook, delete the macro that you just created. You can then open the old Personal.xls workbook (the one you renamed in step 1) and copy all the macro code from it to the new Personal.xls workbook.
Once this is done, you can save Personal.xls, hide it, and delete the old one. The next time you start Excel, the new Personal.xls workbook should load just fine.
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2019-02-10 13:57:55
Jim
The procedure described above does not work! When I try to record a macro into the Personal Macro Workbook, I get a message "Personal Macro Workbook in the startup folder must stay open for recording." It can't stay open if was never opened to begin with. There is no Personal Macro Workbook in and of the startup folders (there are several, shown by File/Options/Trusted Locations/...), a User \XLSTART], an Office \XLSTART\, an Excel \XLSTART\ and several others...none of these locations contain 'personal.xls' or a 'personal.xlsb' file. There is some contradiction/confusion, perhaps on my part, but it sounds like it has to be open in order to be created.
2017-10-09 04:09:58
Fred Goodman
The personal.xls file was not read only.
When I tried to record a macro in the personal.xls file as described above, it could not record because "personal file must be open in the startup folder."
My personal.xls file is currently stored in C/program files (x86)/ microsoft office/office 14
Fred
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