Windows 10: Excel's Avatar and pin to taskbar

I've had Windows 10 on my Surface Pro 3 for a little over a year. In the last 24 hours, I can no longer pin excel to the taskbar and the avatar that shows on the task bar when I open it from the app list is solid gray, i.e., not the little "e" on a green background as it should be. Previously, I could pin to the task bar and excel's avatar showed properly. This is also the only program on which this is happening. What could be the cause?

:)

 

Option to pin to taskbar is missing for Excel in Windows 10

Hello Kent,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Community.

We understand the inconvenience you have experienced.

Usually when you're working on any Excel file, you can see an instance of Excel Icon will be located on taskbar. Simply right-click and selecting
Pin to taskbar will do this. Let me elaborate this in steps.

* Open new Excel sheet or any Excel file which you're working. (I.e. to open new Excel sheet, press
Start, type Excel and select same from the list)

* Go to Taskbar and then right-click on opened Excel file located on taskbar.

* Now select Pin to taskbar.

Another way is, go to Start /> All apps, then navigate alphabetically till you find
Excel. Then right-click on, point to More and select Pin to taskbar.

Done, this will Pin Excel sheet to Taskbar. You can follow the same steps for pinning any application to taskbar.

Keep us posted the outcome.

 

OneDrive files won't stay pinned to taskbar

If a pin an excel files that is saved in my OneDrive folder to the pinned excel files list in the taskbar, once I open that file it disappears from the pinned list. This only happens with files saved in the OneDrive folder. Any files saved in my documents
remain pinned to the taskbar. How can I get the OneDrive files to stay pinned? They stayed pinned before but just started disappearing this last week.

 

Hi Brian, welcome to the Ten Forums.

First thing to do is to try Office Repair. Right click / press and hold the Start button, select Programs and Features:





Select your Microsoft Office version from the the list, select Change, select Quick Repair, select Repair:

 

Hey Kari! Thank-you for the very prompt assist! I tried your suggestion just now and didn't see a change. Still messed up....

Brian

 

Next step is to do the same, this time selecting the Online Repair option. Notice that it will take considerable longer than Quick Repair.

 

Didn't even knew there was Online Repair.
Thanks .

 

Thanks again, Kari for your quick response. I've just completed that process and if didn't work. Thought I might need to restart for it take effect....no dice. (I'm starting to think it's Skynet and the computer is thinking for itself.....)

 

This is a long shot but you could try rebuilding Windows icon cache as told in this tutorial: Icon Cache - Rebuild in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

I tried Option 1 & Option 2 neither worked....weird. Excel is the only one that doesn't display properly. Makes me think that the latest release doesn't have the right icon for excel embedded in the icon cache.

 

Hello Kari, First, thank-you so much for both your efforts and your prompt answer to everyone of my attempts to contact you! I contacted you last week to figure why I couldn't pin excel to the task bar and the icon was blank & grayed-out. You'll never believe how I figured it out....completely accidentally. I was trying to open Word that had become unpinned from the task bar. So, I right clicked on the desktop shortcut and one of the choices was, "Go to the file location". So, I hit that just to see where it was and reasoning that Excel should be there as well. Excel's desktop shortcut file was NOT there. That didn't make sense. So, I right clicked on the desktop shortcut for Excel and clicked on its "Go to file location". It was in some odd file location; it had made up its mind and walked there without help from me! So, I deleted that one and re-created the Excel shortcut where the Word shortcut was...voila, problem solved. I could immediately pin it to the task bar and the icon\avatar had the characteristic X on a green background. Thanks again!

 

LOL that was something I should have thought! Good to know you got it solved.