Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool with lots of functionalities in it. You can use it efficiently in your day-to-day work and change the settings according to your needs. But if at all at some point you want to bring back its default settings then you cannot do it in one go. Also reverting all the changes one by one is not a practical idea. You can reset the excel settings to their default with the help of the windows registry, execute a few commands, or reinstall Office. In this article let us see how to restore the Excel settings to their default on a Windows machine.
Note: Before trying this method take a back up of the registry and save it on your system so that if anything goes wrong you can restore it.
Export the data from registry for backup
Step 1: Open the registry editor and on the top left, right click on computer
Step 2: From the appeared list, click on export
Step 3: Navigate to the required path where you want to save the file, give the file name and click on save
Also close all the opened excel application.
Method 1: Reset Microsoft Excel Using The Registry Editor
Step 1: Open the run prompt using Windows + R keys together
Step 2: Type regedit.exe in the run prompt and hit enter
Step 3: A user account control window will open, click on yes. This will open the registry editor
Step 4: Navigate to the following path in the registry editor. Or copy the following path, paste it into the address bar of the registry editor then hit enter
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office
Step 5: Expand the Office folder by clicking on the arrow mark beside it
Step 6: Here you will find different versions of Excel. Expand the version that you want to reset by clicking on the arrow beside it. For example here I will reset version 16.0, so expand folder 16.0
For excel 2007, expand 12.0,
For excel 2010 expand 14.0,
For excel 2013 expand 15.0 and
For excel 2016 onwards expand 16.0
Step 7: Right click on the excel folder and then click on delete
Step 8: Close the registry window and now open the Excel and it will be restored to its default settings.
Method 2: Reset Microsoft Excel Using PowerShell
Step 1: Open the Windows PowerShell as administrator. To do that press Windows + X keys together and in the appeared list click on Windows PowerShell (Admin)
Step 2: A user account control window will appear, click on yes
Step 3: Copy the below command, paste it in the PowerShell window then hit enter
Note: Replace the <version> with the version of your Excel
Remove-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\<Version>\Excel -Recurse
For example, here I will replace the <version> with 16.0 (if you are using 2016 and later version then use below command) as below
Remove-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel -Recurse
If you are using 2007 version of Excel then use below command
Remove-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel -Recurse
If you are using 2010 version of Excel then use below command
Remove-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel -Recurse
If you are using 2013 version of Excel then use below command
Remove-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Excel -Recurse
Method 3: Repair The Microsoft Office Application
Note: This method will reset all the office applications
Step 1: Open the run prompt using Windows + R keys together
Step 2: Type appwiz.cpl in the run prompt and hit enter. This will open the programs and features window
Step 3: Scroll down and find Microsoft Office (Microsoft 365) application and click on it
Step 4: Then at the top, click on Change button
Step 5: A confirmation window will appear click on yes
Step 6: Select Quick Repair option by clicking on the radio button beside it. Then click on repair button
Step 7: It will take some time to repair it reset to its default settings.
Method 4: Uninstall And Re-install Microsoft Office
If for a few reason none of the solutions work then try to uninstall and re-install the office application so that all the office application will have the default settings.
Step 1: Uninstalling the office packages from control panel does not help, since there will some traces of it stored. So go to the Microsoft website or click on this link Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (SARA) and download SetupProd OffScrub tool
Step 2: Once it is downloaded, double click on the SetupProd_OffScrub.exe file
Step 3: Follow the onscreen instructions and install it
Step 4: Once the installation is complete, there appears a user account control window click on yes
Step 5: The tool starts troubleshooting and in the opened window, select the checkbox beside Microsoft Office (a tick mark should be present)
Step 6: Click on next
Step 7: Now the uninstallation of Office product starts and once finished restart the computer
Step 8: To reinstall, download the Office application according to the required version from the Microsoft website (Office 365, Office 2019 and below)
Step 9: Once downloaded double click on the .exe file and follow the on screen instructions to install it. Now all the office applications will have its default settings.
That’s it! I hope the provided information is helpful and easy to follow. Let us know which of the above method worked for you. Thank you for reading!!