Sorry we couldn’t find an Excel file (even though you know it is there)

Occasionally we come across situations where the client tries to open an excel file the normal way (navigating to it) but when the file is clicked Excel says ‘Sorry we couldn’t find  xyz file’ as shown below. This can be extremely frustrating as you can see it but Excel cannot.

sorry we couldnt find

One of the reasons for this could be where it is saved and how long its name is. If it is within many sub folders and has a long name, Excel is not able to open such a long winded path. As shown below in our YouTube video, this issue can present in many ways.

Ideally you should move it higher up the folder structure or change its name to be shorter.

Before you permanently make the change, create a copy of the file and put it on the desktop and see if you can open it. If you can then you know it is to do with where you saved it or the name length. If not then it may be another issue or a corrupt file.

‘We found a problem with some content’ corruption issue

Pin your regularly used Excel files

New workbook gives ‘Microsoft has blocked macros from running because the source of this file is untrusted’