Sorry, we couldn’t open .xlsx file – Excel error

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We had one user constantly having issues while opening Office documents stored in SharePoint site. Sorry, we couldn’t open ‘http://sharepointsite/sites/teams/documents/report.xlsx’ file. Even though it is one user, he had issues with multiple office files.

Sorry, we couldn't open
Sorry, we couldn’t open http://sharepoint/sites/documents/report.xlsx’ file

We tried with user logging into another machine and try accessing the file. As expected, all the files open fine. This makes it clear that there is some issue with users Office installation in his laptop.

First thing, I checked, which usually always works for me was ‘whether there were multiple office versions installed in users machine‘? This is not the case this time. Only Office 2013 was installed.

Before, kicking of  Office 2013 installation ‘Repair‘, I tried to clear the Document Cache. BAM! that fixed the issue. It turns out that user had corrupted office cache files. There can be many reasons for this error, but this fixed it for me.

Resolution:
  • Close all Office applications.
  • Clear all the files located under %systemDrive%\Users\%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\15.0\OfficeFileCache\

Note: [It’s okay, if you cannot delete one or two files]