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Excel 2016 crashes when opening Conditional Formatting

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Eloise T

Eloise T

Active Member
Due to a recent computer malfunction, I have been relegated to use Excel 2016 temporarily as I normally use Excel 2007. Excel 2016 seems to work reasonably well Except every time I open Conditional Formatting and select Manage Rules... at the bottom of the window, then select:
Show formatting rules for: and (using the drop down arrow) change from Current Selection to:
This Worksheet
then select [OK]
upload_2017-7-23_18-35-4.png


The Excel screen clouds up with white (a surrogate to Windows' blue screen of death?) and these three error messages are displayed:
  • Microsoft Excel has stopped working
  • Microsoft Excel is trying to recover your information
  • Microsoft Excel is restarting
upload_2017-7-23_18-37-33.png
This happens with all my Excel files. When experimenting with newly opened, blank, empty Excel files; sometimes it crashes, and sometimes it doesn't. Occasionally, it crashes the second I try to access Conditional Formatting as I stated above, other times it lets me adjust the formulas, but the second I click "OK" or "Apply," boom...crashes.

Anyone have or had a problem with Excel 2016 crashing when opening Conditional Formatting?
More importantly, anyone know how to fix it?
 
Last edited:
You're absolutely high if you consider 2016 'relegation' from 2007 :)

32 bit, 64 bit office install? and if 32 bit, what version of windows?
 
Hi, Eloise T!
Eloise T said:
This happens with all my Excel files. When experimenting with newly opened, blank, empty Excel files; sometimes it crashes, and sometimes it doesn't.
Click to expand...
A few comments:
Would you describe your experimentation step by step leading to the crash?
Does this crash always happen under the same conditions?
Tried uninstalling and reinstalling Excel/Office?
Tried experimenting on another machine with Excel 2016?
Regards!
 
SirJB7 said:
Hi, Eloise T!

A few comments:
Would you describe your experimentation step by step leading to the crash?
I simply did as I described above:
I opened the file(s) with Conditional Formatting formats made in Excel 2007. I clicked Conditional Formatting and selected Manage Rules (bottom of the window), then selected:
Show formatting rules for: and (using the drop down arrow) changed from Current Selection to:
This Worksheet

The Excel screen immediately proceeds to cloud up with white (before clicking [OK]) (similar to being grayed out) and these three error messages are displayed (see pictures above):
  • Microsoft Excel has stopped working
  • Microsoft Excel is trying to recover your information
  • Microsoft Excel is restarting

Does this crash always happen under the same conditions? Yes.
Tried uninstalling and reinstalling Excel/Office? I have not.
Tried experimenting on another machine with Excel 2016? I have not.
Regards!
Click to expand...

[Be sure to: Click to expand... the above window]
I should note that my Excel 2007 computer is being reimaged by the tech dept. and they asked me if I wanted Office 2016 put on my computer. With this Conditional Formatting issue I told them to put Office 2007 back on...unless someone at Chandoo indicates that there's a Microsoft (or other) fix out there.
 
SirJB7 said:
Hi, Eloise T!

A few comments:
Would you describe your experimentation step by step leading to the crash?
Does this crash always happen under the same conditions?
Tried uninstalling and reinstalling Excel/Office?
Tried experimenting on another machine with Excel 2016?
Regards!
Click to expand...

I just tried opening Conditional Formatting on a smaller file (124 Kb) I had not tried before. I crashed as soon as I selected "Manage Rules..."
upload_2017-7-24_14-43-57.png

Note: most of my Excel files are in the Megabytes size with multiple Conditional Formatting) rules. The one I just described has only one CF rule.
 
Any word?

Did you try repairing the MSO install? Though that sounds like the ol' IT "reboot" strategy, I've seen it work for quirky stuff like this.
 
shrivallabha said:
See if any of the approaches listed in this thread help you:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...tempt-to/75a41824-f9f5-44f0-9de2-4a3eed58d98b
Click to expand...
Thank you. Many good suggestions at this link regarding how to solve the problem.
I have tried several and no luck so far....
Rebooting, Programs and Features --> Repair, etc.

One thing I would like to try is to delete and re-enter the Conditional Formats but I cannot get that far before Excel 2016 crashes.

I'm wondering why 2007 and 2010 are working just fine, but 2016 chokes every time? I'll keep trying other options. You would think that Microsoft would have an answer by now...
 
Out of these, have you tried cleaning up XLSTART folder?

You can choose to post one example workbook which crashes on your computer. Make sure you scrub out all sensitive information. I have Excel 2016 at home. Will see if it causes similar issues here as well.
 
shrivallabha said:
Out of these, have you tried cleaning up XLSTART folder?

You can choose to post one example workbook which crashes on your computer. Make sure you scrub out all sensitive information. I have Excel 2016 at home. Will see if it causes similar issues here as well.
Click to expand...

Please find the attached desensitized file that crashes with Excel 2016 when selecting Conditional Formatting then Manage Rules then change Current Selection to This Worksheet. You won't need to select OK before the screen turns white and it crashes.
 

Attachments

  • Chandoo - currency fix 2.xlsm
    116.8 KB · Views: 7
shrivallabha said:
Out of these, have you tried cleaning up XLSTART folder?

You can choose to post one example workbook which crashes on your computer. Make sure you scrub out all sensitive information. I have Excel 2016 at home. Will see if it causes similar issues here as well.
Click to expand...
I went to the link you gave me and #3 is the XLSTART fix.

I'm not sure I understand what it's asking for me to do.

I found the path using Immediate then ? application.StartupPath

C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

What's next?
More importantly, what's the rationale with this fix?
How is it going to make a difference, or what is it proving?

Thanks as always for your help and guidance.

upload_2017-7-26_17-27-47.png
 
Last edited:
Eloise T said:
I went to the link you gave me and #3 is the XLSTART fix.

I'm not sure I understand what it's asking for me to do.

I found the path using Immediate then ? application.StartupPath

C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

What's next?
More importantly, what's the rationale with this fix?
How is it going to make a difference, or what is it proving?

Thanks as always for your help and guidance.

View attachment 43960
Click to expand...
It contains files which act like settings & user preferences which are prone to corruption.

When you responded in post #10 that you had tried several items I was nearly sure that you had not tried XLSTART.

Failure can come through multitude of reasons and finding the reason for it is often cumbersome (which you know by now) as it may not always be intuitive. If this action doesn't help then you will get one more probability off the list.
 
shrivallabha said:
Out of these, have you tried cleaning up XLSTART folder?

You can choose to post one example workbook which crashes on your computer. Make sure you scrub out all sensitive information. I have Excel 2016 at home. Will see if it causes similar issues here as well.
Click to expand...
I went to the link you gave me and #3 is the XLSTART fix.

I'm not sure I understand what it's asking for me to do.
I used
C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
 
As you can see in the picture above, the XLSTART folder is completely empty. Is that the desired result? I didn't have to move any files out. It was already empty.
 
As you can see in the picture above, the XLSTART folder is completely empty. Is that the desired result?
Click to expand...

Yes, it should be empty. However, most files in there would be hidden. Make sure you set folder option to show hidden files when you check.

With your sample file, I can change context from Current Selection to This Worksheet without issue. Though you do have quite a bit of CF (which I always recommend avoiding).

At any rate, your best recourse may be to do clean install of Office and/or recreate the workbook.
 
Chihiro said:
Yes, it should be empty. However, most files in there would be hidden. Make sure you set folder option to show hidden files when you check.

With your sample file, I can change context from Current Selection to This Worksheet without issue. Though you do have quite a bit of CF (which I always recommend avoiding).

At any rate, your best recourse may be to do clean install of Office and/or recreate the workbook.
Click to expand...
Assuming there are hidden files, (I haven't checked yet), can I simply delete them or do I need to move them?
 
SirJB7 said:
Hi, Eloise T!
Giving up. Good luck.
Regards!
Click to expand...
I was simply hoping someone here on Chandoo had seen or heard of a fix for CF causing Excel 2016 to crash. I'm very disappointed Microsoft has not figured out the fix themselves.
 
Hi, Eloise T!

IMHO the logical steps in this case are:
a) test it at another machine with same OS & Excel (nothing impossible at a company, it'd be different in the case of a home user)
b) uninstall & resinstall Office in that machine (what are IT people for?)
c) upload a sample file for being tested by other people
It's up to you.

I'm not known for loving Redmond guys (Microsoft HQ) but until proved wrong I don't think that this is a general issue.

Regards!
 
SirJB7 said:
Hi, Eloise T!

IMHO the logical steps in this case are:
a) test it at another machine with same OS & Excel (nothing impossible at a company, it'd be different in the case of a home user)
b) uninstall & resinstall Office in that machine (what are IT people for?)
c) upload a sample file for being tested by other people
It's up to you.

I'm not known for loving Redmond guys (Microsoft HQ) but until proved wrong I don't think that this is a general issue.

Regards!
Click to expand...
Understood.

Only one machine, at the moment, has Excel 2016 installed due to the problems I've been having. I had NO problems with Excel 2007, but when my computer crashed they said let's install Excel 2016 and let Eloise be the guinea pig. Conditional Formatting issues pushed me back to Excel 2010 as they couldn't find the Excel 2007 CD nor figure out (yet) the problem with Excel 2016. (I promise to not complain about Excel 2007 ever again.)

Trying very hard to keep my workload at bay with all these issues I'm trying to find solutions like the Column H currency fix, etc.

Either VBA isn't what it's cracked up to be, or I need to get some VBA lessons.

I did upload a sample file that shrivallabha got in #13 above.
Please, download it see if it crashes for you. The more that see it, the better.
:rolleyes:
 
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