Opening Workbooks at Startup

David needs two workbooks automatically opened when he starts Excel. He put the two workbooks in a folder and then entered the path to that folder in the Advanced tab of the Excel Options dialog box, under the General section. Excel won't load the files, however. He gets no messages; Excel just opens a blank workbook. David wonders how he can get Excel to open the two workbooks he needs.

The important thing to understand is that Excel actually has two places where you can place workbooks that you want opened when Excel starts. One place has already been identified by David; the other place is what is referred to as the XLSTART folder. The path to the folder depends on your version of Excel, but you should be able to always get to it by using this path:

%appdata%\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

This is a set location, never varying from system to system. (Though the full path varies by version.) This differs from the "At startup, open all files in" setting that David mentioned. With two startup locations, though, the natural question is how these locations differ.

Honestly, there isn't much difference, other than one is automatic (XLSTART) and the other requires a configuration setting. It is this difference, though, that can be crucial. When setting the "At startup, open all files in" path, there can be issues if:

• The path is misspelled or entered incorrectly
• The path doesn't include a drive letter
• The path points to a folder that is later moved or deleted
• The path points to a network drive that is unavailable

In cases such as this, Excel will not issue a warning or error notice; it just bypasses loading and displays a blank workbook, as David is seeing. Because XLSTART is in a known location, issues related to path specifications do not occur; if a workbook is in the XLSTART folder, it is always loaded.

There are some guidelines that should be followed regardless of whether you are using the XLSTART folder or another folder ("At startup, open all files in"):

• Make sure that the workbooks are not corrupted; they should be loadable.
• Don't store any non-Excel files in the folders.
• Don't create any subfolders in the folders.
• If there are identically named workbooks in both locations, the one in XLSTART is the one that will be opened.
• Opening Excel in Safe Mode will bypass any automatic loading.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13972) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365.