How to Stop Personal.xlsb from Opening in Excel
If you’re tired of closing Personal.xlsb each time Excel opens, here’s how to fix it.
If you’ve created a macro in Excel, you may have noticed that a workbook called Personal.xlsb keeps opening whenever you launch Excel. This isn’t very pleasant, but depending on your system’s setup, completely necessary. Personal.xlsb is where the macros you’ve personally created are stored, and it differentiates your Excel macros from any scripts or extensions that your organization uses. That being said, if seeing Personal. xlsb every time Excel launches bugs you, you can hide it. Here’s how.
Hide Personal. xlsb when Excel Launches
By default, Personal.xlsb will be hidden when Excel launches. Chances are, it’s been there a lot longer than you realize. But for one reason or another, it can become unhidden.
The quickest way to get rid of it is to go to the View tab and click Hide.
Now, Personal.xlsb will continue to open, but it’ll be hidden from view. In this way, you’ll still have access to the macros you’ve recorded, but you won’t see that pesky Personal.xlsb window anymore.
You should know that this file is normally stored in the C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART folder.
In fact, anything you place here will open automatically when you launch Excel.
In theory, another way you could get rid of Personal.xlsb is to delete it from this folder. But then you’d be losing the macros that you’ve saved. You can view your macros from the Developer tab in Excel.
If this entire time I’ve been talking about macros, you’ve had no idea what they are and why you’d need them, then you can probably safely delete Personal.xlsb from this folder. But if you’re on a work computer or if you ever use macros to automate tasks, I might leave it be and hide it just in case.
Are there any other little Excel nuisances you’d like help with? Drop us a line in the comments, and we’ll look into it!
19 Comments
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Lynyker
January 3, 2018 at 5:07 am
Thank you!!! Helped a lot, kind of obvious, but when this bugs you, you lose it!
Jeaux
March 1, 2018 at 9:08 am
I’m having an issue with this. I can’t hide my Personal.xlsb. Every time I try Excel crashes again. I can open old workbooks, but I can’t create any new ones. HELP.
Kristen
June 5, 2018 at 7:59 am
This worked perfectly for me. Thank you very much.
Robert J. Pottle
September 20, 2018 at 4:41 am
Thank you for your advice. This worked great, but one additional step is needed. When you close the opened primary file, you must click Save. Otherwise, the .xlsb file will continue to appear.
Michael Leo Pitre
November 2, 2018 at 7:04 am
Thank you for the post. That solved the issue by copying the C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART and deleted the file.
Pesche
December 3, 2018 at 4:12 am
Thanks for the hint, but this does not work for me. When I hide Personal.xlsb and try to close Excel, it automatically unhides itself probably as a result of the saving dialogue. Any workaround for that? (Excel 2010)
Marta
March 20, 2019 at 6:20 am
Excellent! Very good advices to solve this matter.
Thanks a lot!
Marianne Germain
January 27, 2020 at 9:06 am
Such a time (and energy) saver :)
Thank you so much!!
Laura T
April 1, 2020 at 12:40 pm
This has been plaguing me. Thank you for the clear/concise solution.
Codename
September 6, 2020 at 5:38 am
Thank you for the help.I had important documents and needed to create new ones.I panicked since I thought it was broken but it was just unhidden.
Jesus
September 29, 2020 at 2:12 am
Thank you! very useful!
Laurent DADA
February 3, 2021 at 7:10 am
unable to save files to one drive. excel closes and when I restart i get this message “sorry couldn’t find HTTPS//d.doc.live.net …..”
This started after I created a macro that I saved in file “PERSONAL.xlbs
David Terrill
July 18, 2021 at 10:34 pm
Hi There. I have excel 2013 running on Win 10 (1H21) with the Personal.XLsb with macros & Book.Xlsm (all hidden)running in C:Users\Me\ etc MS\XLstart. All great except that upon start up I get a blank Sht etc but do NOT get the start menu. Can you assist me here, can I get the Start menu up with also the Pls.xlsb (remaining hidden) or is it one or the other?
Thankyou, Dave
Don
November 28, 2021 at 5:25 pm
When I hide the Macro file and open other files they open plus macro file opens; then you have to close both files.
I tried saving the original file and reopen but still the macro file opens with it. How can you have just the original file open and not the xlsb file also. Of course I want to keep the macros I have made.
Ben Chapman
December 10, 2021 at 6:15 am
Thank you! This was exactly what I needed. Happy Holidays!
jack
April 22, 2022 at 11:43 am
Thank you for this. It was bugging me so much!
Paulette
July 20, 2022 at 4:01 am
I can hide the macro, but it is still running in the background and slows down excel when opening any files. How can I set-up a macro to only run when requested? I get a new file daily that I need to run the macro on. The file data changes daily, but the file name always remains the same. I only want the macro to run on this particular file, not every time I open excel (even if it is hidden). Thank you!
Les
February 6, 2023 at 6:29 pm
I have a User Defined Function in personal.xlsb which works. However, I cannot find the Function in other workbooks, even when personal.xlsb is clearly open.
Kindly advise!
Ron
February 28, 2023 at 2:38 pm
Thanks for the advice – very helpful.
richard
November 1, 2023 at 8:30 pm
very helpful and straight fwd, cheers