Excel 2013 locked a file

[MuuDaeng]

Hi all! Couple of days ago excel 2013 suddenly locked file preventing all actions except save. Tried save with another name > locked as well, run some unlocking code with VB found on other forum > excel crashes, run password recovery program > says file not pw protected, etc etc. Nothing seems to help, and can't find easy solution from internet. File is used locally only on my computer, never shared or stored to cloud, never protected as I don't use password protection, hardly ever share any excel files. All other excel files used recently seems to work normally.

Os is Windows 7 Pro. File doesn't contain very complex formulas I couldn't write to new worksheet, but a lot of data which cannot be copy pasted, and quite a job to write all values manually. Any idea how to fix this?

PS. Before posting this tried to open the file but couldn't anymore, password window appears only. Could this be connected with crashing Windows Explorer? Happens often when browse folders containing CAD files, didn't find solution for that either yet (this issue has been there months already and as far as I know had nothing to do with excel files).

[MJCM]

Cryptolocker ???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker

edit: // Added Ps

Ps: Check your PC with HitmanPro: http://www.surfright.nl/en/downloads

Edited March 28, 2014 by MJCM

[MuuDaeng]

Might be virus, but run full inspection with Panda already, didn't help. Password window is excels own, not as Cryptolockers shown on Wiki pages. And only this file is locked, all others worked normally so far. But, there is also annoying popup add (Mozilla) which Addblock doesn't block, advertising some online casino if remember right. That was actually reason why made full inspection, but add is still there also.

[MJCM]

Understood,

but do run scans on your pc with these programs, as sometimes a Virus scanner doesn't detect everything.

HitmanPro : http://www.surfright.nl/en/downloads

MalwareBytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/

SuperAntiSpyware:: http://www.superantispyware.com/downloadfile.html?productid=SUPERANTISPYWAREFREE

[RichCor]

Sounds like the file is corrupted, and excel is interpreting the corrupted section.

Try googling "recover corrupted excel file"

Also, if you had odd popups while using the excel, you really need to do a comprehensive scan of your entire system, as MJCM suggests.

(each anti-virus/malware detector have their unique strength or weakness -- the companies don't share detection methods with each other -- so it's a good idea to run through each of the trusted ones so it might find what the others missed)

[Passcovery]

I agree with RichCor, perhaps, the document is damaged. If you did not set a password for the document and password recovery software can't find it, it means that it was not set for.

By the way, what is the format of your file? If it is Excel 97-2003, you can try to send it to any service decrypting Office files.

[MuuDaeng]

Couldn't agree more; file is corrupted, or there is virus. But..., no, Hitman and other things tried so far didn't solve the problem. Either didn't any excel orientated thing or advice so far found in internet elsewhere or in answers here; they are more or less based on procedure "open and....", and cannot open no more, means not saving or any other actions allowed either.
No, the popup does not appear exactly when using excel, but Mozilla (maybe or probably while using excel, but that's because on my laptop these programs are usually open "from morning to evening"). Just though might be related, because trying to remember all not usual or normal things there have been last days/weeks.

Format of file is xlsx.

[wolf5370]

My niece had a similar problem with some school project Excel file. In the end the only way I managed to recover it was to open it in Kingoffice (a M$ Office clone) and resave it out to a new file - Kingoffice read it OK (I also tried some other Office suits they didn't work). Kingoffice is free btw.

You might also try saving it from Excel as a non M$ file (even CSV if there are no graphics or VBA in it/needed).

Edited March 28, 2014 by wolf5370

[hml367]

Have you tried checking the Properties of the file? Check the Security tab. There may be some clues there if it is not the corruption or virus as some have said.

Check the permissions in the Security tab. There is also information about the file in the Details tab.

Edited March 28, 2014 by hml367

[MuuDaeng]

Thanks for all, just didn't work this time. Every single action stops in the very beginning because can't open the file or copy/export it, or anything. But, ok, if I find a solution will post it here, might be useful for someone. Good thing is, that I've done backup more or less regularly, so there should be a little outdated file on external hard drive, which should work as problem has been there only couple of days. Should be, full backup has been lately a little bit too big for available space on hard drive....

[DogNo1]

Ah yes! The joys of office 2013. After struggling for a week with some mysterious confluence of Windows 8 UAC and Office 2013 - Word 2013 refusing to open doc files created with earlier versions of Word and Excel not wanting to open earlier versions of Excel spreadsheets, I uninstalled Office 2013 and reinstalled Office 2010. Haven't had a problem since!

[Mark T]

Ah yes! The joys of office 2013. After struggling for a week with some mysterious confluence of Windows 8 UAC and Office 2013 - Word 2013 refusing to open doc files created with earlier versions of Word and Excel not wanting to open earlier versions of Excel spreadsheets, I uninstalled Office 2013 and reinstalled Office 2010. Haven't had a problem since!

Yep, office 2010 is much much better than its successor! Proly Ballmer's departing shot against his engineers! >_>

Sent from my GT-P6200

[wooloomooloo]

If the data was important then it's God's way of telling you to backup your files next time.

[Mrjlh]

Try this...clink on Formula, a drop down box should appear and at the bottom is "Protection". click on unlock. Should be able to unlock the file. See if that works.

[GuyL]

A few suggestions...

You might be able to upload and then convert your Excel 2013 file online (for instance in the older .xls file format). Several free file converters are available online, such as this one, for instance: http://www.freefileconvert.com/

If this does not work, I would suggest that you boot your computer on Hiren's Boot CD (or on a similar bootable CD where another operating system may be launched instead of the one that is located on your system hard drive, such as a Linux live CD or DVD, for instance).

After booting your computer with Hiren's Boot CD for instance, you may select the "Mini Windows XP" menu and launch this operating system (it's a "customised" operating system that ressembles Windows XP and that includes many very useful tools). The goal here is to not booting on your current operating system, thus bypassing (hopefully) any file locking by a program or a service that is running on your current operating system).

Then, you should be able to copy your locked file elsewhere (and even delete it later, after you copied it succesfully and checked that your problem is solved), on an USB flash drive for instance. Once copied on an USB flash drive, you should be able to open it (provided that the file is not corrupted) and edit it or convert it if needed using another computer if you still can not perform these modifications on your own machine once restarted on its current operating system.

Hiren's Boot CD is free and available here: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Edited March 28, 2014 by GuyL

[MuuDaeng]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

If the data was important then it's God's way of telling you to backup your files next time.

Not matter of life or death but would like to know why and how to fix, because could happen again. Restored copy from backup, couple of weeks old so it took only minutes to copy newer data from one of "save as" files saved earlier and still can open and read.

Try this...clink on Formula, a drop down box should appear and at the bottom is "Protection". click on unlock. Should be able to unlock the file. See if that works.

Not sure but maybe goes that way in 2010, didn't find "Protection" but only "Unprotect Sheet" on Review tab. I've been using 2013 only few months and there is still a lot of details that are slightly different to 2010 and I'm not very familiar with. Still, password required as in any other action, unprotect command was one of very first things I tried also.

A few suggestions...

You might be able to upload and then convert your Excel 2013 file online (for instance in the older .xls file format). Several free file converters are available online, such as this one, for instance: http://www.freefileconvert.com/

If this does not work, I would suggest that you boot your computer on Hiren's Boot CD (or on a similar bootable CD where another operating system may be launched instead of the one that is located on your system hard drive, such as a Linux live CD or DVD, for instance).

After booting your computer with Hiren's Boot CD for instance, you may select the "Mini Windows XP" menu and launch this operating system (it's a "customised" operating system that ressembles Windows XP and that includes many very useful tools). The goal here is to not booting on your current operating system, thus bypassing (hopefully) any file locking by a program or a service that is running on your current operating system).

Then, you should be able to copy your locked file elsewhere (and even delete it later, after you copied it succesfully and checked that your problem is solved), on an USB flash drive for instance. Once copied on an USB flash drive, you should be able to open it (provided that the file is not corrupted) and edit it or convert it if needed using another computer if you still can not perform these modifications on your own machine once restarted on its current operating system.

Hiren's Boot CD is free and available here: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

I'll check this Hiren's Boot CD, for future needs, they for sure occur as computer is getting a little old and loaded with heavy software for modelling etc. This time I gave up, just updated missing data to old, recovered file and life goes on.

But here is other thing mentioned earlier, popup add that appears few times a day, screen shot attached. Have been there couple of weeks already, and can't find malware or virus causing it, scanners don't find, Adblock isn't able to block it, can't find it anywhere in Mozilla. It's not only annoying, but could be big security risk also. Does anyone know how to get rid of it?

[GuyL]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

If the data was important then it's God's way of telling you to backup your files next time.

Not matter of life or death but would like to know why and how to fix, because could happen again. Restored copy from backup, couple of weeks old so it took only minutes to copy newer data from one of "save as" files saved earlier and still can open and read.

Try this...clink on Formula, a drop down box should appear and at the bottom is "Protection". click on unlock. Should be able to unlock the file. See if that works.

Not sure but maybe goes that way in 2010, didn't find "Protection" but only "Unprotect Sheet" on Review tab. I've been using 2013 only few months and there is still a lot of details that are slightly different to 2010 and I'm not very familiar with. Still, password required as in any other action, unprotect command was one of very first things I tried also.

A few suggestions...

You might be able to upload and then convert your Excel 2013 file online (for instance in the older .xls file format). Several free file converters are available online, such as this one, for instance: http://www.freefileconvert.com/

If this does not work, I would suggest that you boot your computer on Hiren's Boot CD (or on a similar bootable CD where another operating system may be launched instead of the one that is located on your system hard drive, such as a Linux live CD or DVD, for instance).

After booting your computer with Hiren's Boot CD for instance, you may select the "Mini Windows XP" menu and launch this operating system (it's a "customised" operating system that ressembles Windows XP and that includes many very useful tools). The goal here is to not booting on your current operating system, thus bypassing (hopefully) any file locking by a program or a service that is running on your current operating system).

Then, you should be able to copy your locked file elsewhere (and even delete it later, after you copied it succesfully and checked that your problem is solved), on an USB flash drive for instance. Once copied on an USB flash drive, you should be able to open it (provided that the file is not corrupted) and edit it or convert it if needed using another computer if you still can not perform these modifications on your own machine once restarted on its current operating system.

Hiren's Boot CD is free and available here: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

I'll check this Hiren's Boot CD, for future needs, they for sure occur as computer is getting a little old and loaded with heavy software for modelling etc. This time I gave up, just updated missing data to old, recovered file and life goes on.

But here is other thing mentioned earlier, popup add that appears few times a day, screen shot attached. Have been there couple of weeks already, and can't find malware or virus causing it, scanners don't find, Adblock isn't able to block it, can't find it anywhere in Mozilla. It's not only annoying, but could be big security risk also. Does anyone know how to get rid of it?

Hiren's Boot CD also contains many antimalware tools, such as Malwarebytes antimalware, SuperAntispyware, Spybot Search and Destroy, etc. (see there for instance for a detailed list of its contents: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd). If I were you, I would boot my computer on Hiren's boot CD, launch its "Mini Windows XP" operating system and then scan and clean my local hard drives with those tools (at least one of the three mentioned above). This way (booting on Hiren's boot CD), it should prevent any malware being replicated by a process launched by your current operating system.

After having performed these operations, you might need to also run several other tools from this CD under your current operating system, because, for instance, a scheduled task or a program launched at startup trying to copy some piece of malware that doesn't exist anymore might still be active and you might then get a weird ("file not found", for instance) error message. Even if there is no error message, you might still have other annoying and unnecessary processes running on your computer. Hiren's boot CD also contains several other useful tools, such as registry cleaners and startup tools (check those),. You have to launch those programs from this CD under your usual operating system now (you don't need to boot your computer with Hiren's boot CD in this case: you just insert the CD and launch its Boot CD menu under your current Windows 7 operating system). If I were you, I would first check what is launched at startup with Autoruns (in the "Startup tools" section): it will help you to identify what is launched at startup that should not be (check in particular everything that is highlighted in yellow and delete any unnecessary entry there).

[RichCor]

If the data was important then it's God's way of telling you to backup your files next time.

Not matter of life or death but would like to know why and how to fix, because could happen again. Restored copy from backup, couple of weeks old so it took only minutes to copy newer data from one of "save as" files saved earlier and still can open and read.

Sorry, but could you explain this in a bit more detail?

- You restored an older version of the file (couple of weeks old) from backup. Opened and displays correctly.

- A) copy/pasted in a bunch of raw data cells, or

- copy/pasted in a bunch of raw data and formulas into the spreadsheet, or

- C) imported data into a blank section of the spreadsheet

- Saved this file, closed then tried to reopen and

- D) program prompted me for a file password I never set (just like old file did before the recovery), or

- E) program throws up an error that reads: (error here)

Also, please let us know what type of PC, amount of RAM, amount of free space on HD

What kind of crash are you having with Windows Explorer (file explorer)

[MuuDaeng]

If the data was important then it's God's way of telling you to backup your files next time.

Not matter of life or death but would like to know why and how to fix, because could happen again. Restored copy from backup, couple of weeks old so it took only minutes to copy newer data from one of "save as" files saved earlier and still can open and read.

Sorry, but could you explain this in a bit more detail?

- You restored an older version of the file (couple of weeks old) from backup. Opened and displays correctly.

- A) copy/pasted in a bunch of raw data cells, or

- copy/pasted in a bunch of raw data and formulas into the spreadsheet, or

- C) imported data into a blank section of the spreadsheet

- Saved this file, closed then tried to reopen and

- D) program prompted me for a file password I never set (just like old file did before the recovery), or

- E) program throws up an error that reads: (error here)

File restored from backup works fine, only had to add data manually as copy/paste not allowed from corrupted file. Can't open original at all anymore, copy saved before from it opens but password required for all actions, including copying content of cells. All other excel files seems to work fine also.

Also, please let us know what type of PC, amount of RAM, amount of free space on HD. Laptop HP Elitebook 8560W, i5, Windows 7 Pro, RAM 4 GB, HD 500 GB, at the moment disk C (Win and programs) free space 130 from 234, disk D (Data storage) free 88 from 210.

What kind of crash are you having with Windows Explorer (file explorer) Crashes very often when exploring folders containing CAD files, rarely if exploring other folders. Happens Inventor or CAD open or not, just open folder and almost immediately "Windows Explorer has stopped..." (or something like that, my pc gives notifications in other language). Sometimes not right away but when try to for example copy files from these folders to other location.

[RichCor]

Not matter of life or death but would like to know why and how to fix, because could happen again. Restored copy from backup, couple of weeks old so it took only minutes to copy newer data from one of "save as" files saved earlier and still can open and read.

Sorry, but could you explain this in a bit more detail?

- You restored an older version of the file (couple of weeks old) from backup. Opened and displays correctly.

- A) copy/pasted in a bunch of raw data cells, or

- copy/pasted in a bunch of raw data and formulas into the spreadsheet, or

- C) imported data into a blank section of the spreadsheet

- Saved this file, closed then tried to reopen and

- D) program prompted me for a file password I never set (just like old file did before the recovery), or

- E) program throws up an error that reads: (error here)

Also, please let us know what type of PC, amount of RAM, amount of free space on HD.

What kind of crash are you having with Windows Explorer (file explorer)

File restored from backup works fine, only had to add data manually as copy/paste not allowed from corrupted file. Can't open original at all anymore, copy saved before from it opens but password required for all actions, including copying content of cells. All other excel files seems to work fine also.

Laptop HP Elitebook 8560W, i5, Windows 7 Pro, RAM 4 GB, HD 500 GB, at the moment disk C (Win and programs) free space 130 from 234, disk D (Data storage) free 88 from 210.

Crashes very often when exploring folders containing CAD files, rarely if exploring other folders. Happens Inventor or CAD open or not, just open folder and almost immediately "Windows Explorer has stopped..." (or something like that, my pc gives notifications in other language). Sometimes not right away but when try to for example copy files from these folders to other location.

Ok, sorry if I seem thick, but the excel file recovered from backup (and manually updated) is working fine? Great.

I've experienced the same issue with excel where some glitch in the save process erroneously triggers the protect flag. Happy to know you had a backup that could be brought up to date and is working.

Regarding the CAD files... could be either a hidden file in the directory or an issue creating thumb images. If you're up to it you might want to try using a 3rd party file explorer to move the files into a new directory, then check again.

Also, might try googling: CAD files crashing windows explorer and see if it's a known issue with resolution to your specific CAD App.

[MuuDaeng]

I did already some research about problem with Explorer, and most probably it's conflict between Windows and some program version installed. But, I don't know exactly how to find out exact file or program causes it, all solutions found so far are for a symptoms described a little different. So first will remove programs don't actually need at all, and do some cleanup in general. Time for that anyway because especially start up is getting slow. Also will clean dust and s*it from inside, sometimes think whole thing is running hot, which causes problems.

If these don't help significantly, it's maybe time to reinstall Windows and software needed, quite a job but after that usually works smooth again.

[DogNo1]

A great replacement for Windows Explorer (file manager) is Total Commander. It can be downloaded and run for free if you don't mind clicking on the number that it specifies on startup. Under "Options" you can set it to open two windows and show drive icons. That will give you a split window where you can have the contents of one drive on the right side and another drive on the left. Also, there is a utility called Combofix. This does the work of several different cleanup programs but I think that it is not free. You might consider buying the paid versions of Malwarebytes or CCleaner to continuously protect your computer. Personally, I use Tuneup Utilities 2014. It works automatically and pretty well. Once you buy it for the first time, the yearly upgrades are cheap. Good luck!

[DogNo1]

Oh, yes. Try Revo Uninstaller to remove all traces of a program.

[attrayant]

Try opening it with another program that can read MS spreadsheets, like Open Office Calc. You could also try uploading it to google docs to see if it'll open there.

[MuuDaeng]

This issue has been there messing more or less all the time, today was quite bad; opening certain folders incl cad files caused crash right away. So, decided to try to search again help from net and found from social.technet.microsoft.com forum:

"1. Download ShellExView v1.41 from the following link http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.zip
Please Note: The third-party product discussed here is manufactured by a company that is independent of Microsoft. We make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this product's performance or reliability.
2. Extract "shexview.zip" file and open shexview.exe. It will scan the registry for all the shell extensions.
3. Select all the non-Microsoft extensions in pink by press "Ctrl" in the keyboard.
4. Click the "Disable Selected Items" on the toolbar and click Yes.
5. Restart your computer and check if the issue is resolved."

Accomplished, and so far, after about 30 min exploring no crashes.

[gzu88bv]

Maybe this is of help.

Start Excel on ist own, if you cant’t, open it in administrator mode. Uncheck all the Add-Ins within Excel (as shown in my attachment). Close Excel again.

After that just start Excel again and via File/Open open your file in question. If successful, save the file again and that might work. For some reason Add-Ins get checked and do cause the problem.

I am working with Windows 7 SP1 64-bit and MS Office Professional 2013 and since I found out Excel has always run like a charm.

Excel Spreadsheet.pdf

[Chicog]

My first guess would be file corruption.

But open Excel in Safe Mode ( i.e. with the /S suffix) and see what happens.

[NeverSure]

My first guess would be file corruption.

But open Excel in Safe Mode ( i.e. with the /S suffix) and see what happens.

Cmon. Give us old timers a break. You know, the ones that remember when you had to run everything in DOS?

/s is called the s switch.

[Chicog]

Yeah but I don't know if he's that old, and Suffix makes more sense that Switch, no?

I mean, I'm waiting for him to ask where to use it.