Excel for Mac keeps trying to recover autosaved files

When I open Excel for Mac it always starts with a message

Excel saved changes to the file before the application quit unexpectedly.

It then prompts me to open the last saved version (even though last Excel session ended normally). When I click on Open, no previous sheet opens, it presents me with the window to select a blank sheet or to start from a number of existing templates.

Somehow it is hung up thinking the previous session was corrupted, the file(s) got autosaved and tries to open the autosaved version on every start. How can I solve this?

Solution 1:

If you have Office 2016 go to /Users/[your User directory name]/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office and delete MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg file. Just in case make sure you have your MS ID or Office 365 subscription info.

Solution 2:

Mac being *nix we can use ~ to represent the user's home folder.

Thus the most accurate answer is: Open Finder > Go > Go to Folder... and type:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office

Presssing Go opens a folder. Find and delete the file MicrosoftRegistrationDB.reg.

In my case this resolved the problem and did not require me to re-license. It also saved over 600MB of disc space :)