Lost Personal Workbook file personal.xlsb

[Yodelayheewho]

Hello forum,
Last week, Excel/Office 365 was misbehaving and after my IT guy tried every conservative option to fix it, he had no choice but to wipe out my profile and start over. He warned me that this would remove my customizations. This fixed the Office issue, but created a new one...my personal macro workbook is gone.

I did some research and was told to go to VBE and in the Immediate Window and type: “?Application.StartupPath” (without the “”). When I hit enter, it showed me the file path to the personal.xlsb: C:\Users\lritter\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

However, the folder is empty.

I read more and some people had luck by creating a new macro and personal.xlsb workbook; saying this will force the hidden workbook to appear. No luck. The XLSTART folder is still empty, but the ‘new’ personal workbook resides OUTSIDE the folder. I’ve not saved it yet. I’m afraid to.

I probably had 30+ macros saved and I used the personal workbook because I read it was the safest place to save your macros.

I asked my IT guy about this and he said he's guessing the orginal file is gone. Is there any hope?

 

[Marc L]

Hello, as Excel is not data safe like a database software is so for any pro context you must backup your important workbooks !​

The only hope you may have is the IT dude did not delete your previous user XL path​

so you may retrieve your file just with a Windows Explorer search on the drive.​

The only safe place to save - backup - the VBA procedures is to export the modules to text files​

in order when Excel crashes again without any workbook backup the saved text files are still there …​

​

 

[Yodelayheewho]

Hi Marc L,

IT dude did not delete your previous user XL path

I assume it is lost since the XLSTART folder is empty.
Luckily, I did save a lot of macros as text files.
I'm wondering if I should just do that and forget about a Personal Macro Workbook? Your thoughts?

 

[Marc L]

Last century when I saw how badly Excel was I decided to not use a personal workbook​

but I created some add-ins with their own tool bar and of course each has a backup and VBA exported to text files …​

​

No matter if you use a personal workbook, just keep in mind any important Excel file must have a backup in a particular place​

an never open directly the backup under Excel, copy first the backup to a work folder …​

​

 

[rlv01]

my IT guy tried every conservative option to fix it, he had no choice but to wipe out my profile and start over.

I feel your pain. This happened to me ~10 years ago when our IT department pushed a version upgrade installer that wiped the XLSTART folder contents. I had an older backup in a different folder, but I still lost maybe 20 newer macros. I back everything up now. And I hope you have learned that any phrases like "reinstall" or "we should start over" coming out of an IT guy's mouth are major red flags indating you need to insist on a pause while you attend to critical backups.

 

[Yodelayheewho]

Last century when I saw how badly Excel was I decided to not use a personal workbook​

but I created some add-ins with their own tool bar and of course each has a backup and VBA exported to text files …​

​

No matter if you use a personal workbook, just keep in mind any important Excel file must have a backup in a particular place​

an never open directly the backup under Excel, copy first the backup to a work folder …​

​

I appreciate the advice on not opening backups unless you copy it first. Excellent advice!

I feel your pain. This happened to me ~10 years ago when our IT department pushed a version upgrade installer that wiped the XLSTART folder contents. I had an older backup in a different folder, but I still lost maybe 20 newer macros. I back everything up now. And I hope you have learned that any phrases like "reinstall" or "we should start over" coming out of an IT guy's mouth are major red flags indating you need to insist on a pause while you attend to critical backups.

I should have known better when he said 'wipe out your profile' to make sure I did backups first. This 'wipe out' also impacted my Google bookmarks.
I had set up my Google account with two profiles, one personal and one work. My personal was untouched, but the second profile for work disappeared and the bookmarks went with it. So, yeah, I have to change my ways. I appreciate your comment.