5.24 FAQ-508 Troubleshooting of Excel Errors in Origin

Last Update: 11/9/2021

Cannot open Excel book inside Origin

When opening a file containing Excel book or creating a new Excel book window, the following Excel error message may appear:

Origin is unable to launch Excel. Please make sure that Excel is properly installed.
If Excel is already installed on your computer, you may need to restart Windows.

This will probably occur in Excel 2016 or later. To fix this, please try following:

Make sure no Excel process exist.
Start Excel. Click File > Options on the bottom left corner to open dialog.
On General page, there is a radio box, "when using multiple displays:".
Change to select "optimize for compatibility". Click OK and then close Excel.

or
If above compatibility option is already selected, please check if Excel application exists and any dialog is opening.
If yes, close that dialog.

Now Origin should be able to open Excel book window.

Cannot open project with internal Excel file

When opening a file in which Excel spreadsheets are part of the data, the following Excel error messages appear:

The application cannot be completed because the other program is busy. Use "switch to" to activate the other program and fix the problem.
or
Microsoft Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action

The first message might be followed by the second.

Open Task Manager
Close all open excel files, processes and running applications.

This should fix the problem and Excel in Origin should run fine again.

Cannot copy/paste greater than 65536 values from Excel into Origin

Copy pasting more than 65536 rows results in a cut off and all values after the 65536th are not pasted. The workaround for this is:

On the Origin main menu go to Window: Script Window
In the Script Window type :
@XLP=0;
Highlight the contents of Script Window and press Enter

This should fix the problem, you should now be able to copy paste more than 65536 rows.

Keywords:Excel, error, Origin, open Excel, troubleshooting