How To Reset Microsoft Excel To Its Default Settings

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

 

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



 

Registry

 

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

 

Path

 

Step 5: Expand the Office folder by clicking on the arrow mark beside it

 

Office

 

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

 

Version

 

Step 7: Right click on the excel folder and then click on delete

 

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)

 

Powershell

 

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

 

 

Remove

 

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

 

Appwiz

 

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

 

Office Repair

 

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

 



Quick Repair

 

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!!