Peculiarities with Excel 365 and Window Sizing

[britechguy]

What follows happens frequently, but not 100% consistently:

1. On my machine, when opening an existing XLSX file by double-clicking on it often results in the Excel Window opening very small, just showing a small part of the Home Ribbon and small part of the worksheet. This is even if the worksheet was at full screen when last closed.

2. On a client machine, when hitting the minimize button on the window frame, rather than minimizing to the taskbar we get a micro-window that's nothing more than a window-frame that's the Excel icon, Restore Up button, and Close Button, and it hovers over any other open workbook rather than minimizing to the taskbar.

I have never figured out why either one of these two things occurs or if there's some obscure setting involved that might be tweaked. If either situation rings a bell, and you know of a solution, please offer it.

 

[seashore]

No idea why it would do that, but does it behave differently if you manually resize Excel to full screen instead of using the maximize button?

 

[Sky-Knight]

This is an ancient behavior pattern (seriously it goes all the way back to Windows 3.1!), and it has nothing to do with Excel specifically. Though, I swear Excel triggers it more often than most other apps, except perhaps Outlook! It's particularly common on multi-monitor setups, doubly so for laptops that migrate between multi-monitor setups.

Anyway, the window when tiny is a "standard" window, and if you click the Maximize button, then double click the title bar to drop it to standard window you'll toggle between these two states. (standard and maximized) The fix is to toggle it into the standard window, then grab the corner to resize it to something sane then close the app that's doing it.

The bug is triggered when Windows cannot determine the appropriate size or location of the window the app needs to fit inside on launch. All you can do is resize it and it'll sort it out. Sometimes I've seen the snap to feature trigger it too.

The failure to minimize to the tray is a separate but related issue with Explorer, once you've fixed the window condition above a reboot or a logout / back in again should resolve it.

 

[britechguy]

@Sky-Knight

Thanks. I cannot replicate the "failure to minimize to the tray, with floating micro window" on my own machine nor have I seen it anywhere else. But I'll forward these suggestions to my client so he can try them out next week.

I've had the "Excel opens in way too small a window" issue crop up more times than I can count, but I just resize the window and get on with life. I just wish I could find a way to permanently fix it to behave like Word, Outlook (for me) and the other Office suite programs under M365 do, and that's opening with a maximized full-window all the time.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@britechguy As I said before this is ancient behavior, and there isn't a fix that I'm aware of either. Every Windows application on the planet that launches itself with remembered window sizing and locations will fall pray to this problem every so often. I have no idea where Windows stores this data to clear it, all I do know is every so often I get to pull apart a tiny window, and every so often I get to remember what keystrokes are required to force a window into move mode so I can drag it into a monitor I have, and off the invisible monitor it's displaying on.

These things happen quite regularly to me as I move my work laptop from my home office to my regular office. There was a patch on this behavior earlier this year, and it did help! But it's certainly not fixed entirely. I've rather given up on ever seeing it resolved, because again this crap goes all the way back to Windows 3.1!

 

[britechguy]

@Sky-Knight

I realize it's old, but most "old" behaviors have established semi-workarounds that keep things going as desired "for a while" until it happens again. All I'm saying is that I have never even come close to finding a semi-workaround, and I don't move between machines nor use multiple monitors.

And because, for me and my client, it's limited to Excel (in practice, I know it could happen in theory to any Windows program) I can't believe that "everyone's experiencing it, all the time," or the hue and cry would be very loud indeed. There's got to be a semi-workaround that sticks, and it's the "that sticks" part I haven't found or come close to finding. It must exist.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@britechguy Nothing that sticks I'm aware of either. And worse... no fix that can be had via a quick series of keystrokes.

It'd be different if we could alt+whatever and have it sort itself out. But it's alt+tab + click drag insanity that is incredibly difficult for anyone with a disability.

 

[britechguy]

Luckily, in this case, it's not someone with a disability. If it were, I'd be even more annoyed.

 

[HCHTech]

I have the "open to a tiny window" issue with Quickbooks desktop every so often. Nice to hear a cogent explanation!