Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Feb 10, 2020

Recovery of personal.xlsb lost on Excel update.

10 days ago I changed from Office 2016 to O365. Is there anyway to recover my former personal.xlsb file that was lost in this process??

Silver Contributor

Feb 10, 2020

The file should still be there. It is normally located in a folder you can reach by typing this into Windows Explorer's address bar and pressing enter:
%appdata%\microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

311battey
Copper Contributor
Feb 10, 2020
JKPieterse

When I started Excel after it was "reinstalled" I started the program, activated the developer tab and looked for my macros. They were not there and personal.xlsb did not show up as a possible location in the Excel macros selection window. I closed Excel and tried File Explorer but it could not find XLStart or personal.xlsb in my Windows 10 user folder. I started Excel again, created a simple macro in personal.xlsb, closed Excel (and saved personal.xlsb). The personal.xlsb file now exists in appdata\roaming\microsoft\Excel\XLStart and is easily located by FIle Explorer. This new personal.xlsb file contains only the simple macro I created above.

Any idea where I might find my old personal.xlsb file so I can get my macros back?
- JKPieterse
  Silver Contributor
  Feb 10, 2020
  All I can think of is hopefully a backup?
  - 311battey
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 10, 2020
    JKPieterse
    
    Ok. Thanks.
    
    Assume the previous MS Office applications had become corrupted (which is what I was told and prompted the tech to refresh O365) is there any way to reinstall/refresh the Office applications and not lose the existing options and configurations like the personal.xlsb files? Should I have expected the xlstart folder to disappear when I re installed / updated O365?
    
    Thanks.

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