Excel files not opening

Amit Vip 20 Reputation points
2025-09-11T10:29:24.51+00:00

I am currently using Office Home & Student 2019 version for Mac. I am not able to open certain excel files received from outside. I get a message to "Grant Access" and when I click that it says "can't open as the file version is different". I tried to update the version from MS website and now Excel has stopped opening. I get a message "Microsoft Excel quit unexpectedly."

Don't know what to do? Please help.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | MacOS
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Answer accepted by question author
Randy Baroja 20,810 Reputation points Independent Advisor
2025-09-11T11:04:45.8166667+00:00

Hi Amit,

Nice to meet you! My name is Randy and I'm an independent advisor.

If Excel crashes or won’t open certain files on your Mac, You can try this, first reset its preferences by closing Excel, going to ~/Library/Preferences, and moving any com.microsoft.Excel files to the Desktop, then restart Excel; next, clear the Office cache by moving the OfficeFileCache folder from ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/ to the Desktop and try again. For files showing "file version is different," try opening them in Excel Online or saving a new .xlsx copy. If Excel still crashes, fully uninstall Office including apps in Applications and remaining com.microsoft.* files in ~/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Containers/ then reinstall from your Microsoft account. These steps remove corrupted settings and version conflicts that usually cause crashes and file errors.

When you tried updating Office from the website, did it install over the old version, or did you manually remove the old version first?

Kind regards,

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