I was recently fighting with Excel because I was sick of it wanting to run in Compatibility Mode by default. Everything I found out there said that you simply need to change the option for Save-As to be the 2007 format. This only seemed to work on the workbooks I had open. If I closed and re-opened Excel it would be back in Compatibility Mode.
Remembering from my old days of hacking Excel 97 workbooks and creating templates with Macro’s I recalled a way to change the default workbook that Excel would use when starting up. This is where the ‘ah-ha’ happened.
Below are the steps you may use to force Excel out of Compatibility Mode when it starts up if changing the aforementioned Save-As method does not work for you.
1. Open Excel (you should get Book1 [Compatibility Mode] by default)
2. Save-As (F12) and save it as Book1.xlsx (the 2007 format) in the following location:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\XLSTART
3. Restart Excel
That’s it! Excel by default will look in this location (based on where you installed Excel) for the default workbook it uses when starting up. Since you have saved it in the 2007 format Excel will no longer run in Compatibility Mode by default. It will only do this when opening .xls files that were saved in Compatibility Mode. For those, just save as .xlsx and you should be good.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Ben
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 am
As I am using this method described above I found that new workbooks still open in the old format. I’m guessing this is a registry setting that our IT organization has in place so I will begin my research into how to undo this and post my results shortly.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
Update – I’ve discovered that this is somehow related to my user profile. I’m not sure if it’s a group policy or local setting but when I do a ‘Run As’ for Excel and use a different user account that has never logged onto my laptop before, I get the default view in Non-Compatibility mode…
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I found out today that this was a result of my companies group policy settings. After talking to the IT guys I was able to have them change this for me since there was no reason.
This of course comes after completely blowing away my profile and recreating it on my laptop…
August 20th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Thank you very much for this useful tip which worked for me. It was getting to be quite annoying.
August 25th, 2009 at 1:05 am
We have the same problem at my company. Thanks for your detective work.. Could you supply the group policy setting your IT guys had set ?
Thanks a lot.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Thank you!
This helped a frustrated man who was working way past midnight. (4am)
You saved my night! =) I was able to copy+paste formulas after these tips.
Chris