Excel 365 tab in Arabic and columns displaying Z-A rather than A-Z

Question

_{Friday, February 15, 2019 10:42 AM}

When right-clicking the desktop in Windows 10 and selecting New Excel document, the spreadsheet tab is in Arabic and columns are displayed Z-A rather than A-Z. English is set as the system default language as well as in Excel. Creating a new spreadsheet by starting Excel from the Start menu creates a normal spreadsheet, the tab is in English and the columns are displayed A-Z. Does anyone know what is causing this?

Office 365 ProPlus Version 16.0.8431.2270

All replies (4)

_{Monday, February 18, 2019 10:12 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Doug,

Please check the following settings:

1. Open the registry editor.
2. Expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to see folders.
3. Scroll-down to .xlsx folder.
4. Expand .xlsx, Excel.Sheet.12 to see ShellNew folder.

Check the FileName value, open File Explorer and go to the path value. Generally, it is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\VFS\Windows\SHELLNEW for Excel 2016.

Right-click the Excel12.xlsx file, select Open. Confirm if the spreadsheet tab and columns are displayed correctly or not. If it is not correct, copy a correct blank worksheet and rename it to Excel12.xlsx and replace this problem file to have a try.

Best Regards,
Winnie Liang

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_{Thursday, February 21, 2019 10:09 AM}

That has fixed our issue, well done and thank you.

_{Thursday, February 21, 2019 10:20 AM}

That has fixed our issue, well done and thank you.

You are welcome. Glad it helps :)

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact： [email protected].

Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Office 2019.

_{Tuesday, October 29, 2019 1:40 PM | 1 vote}

Hi Winnie Liang,

thank you for that post, the solution worked for us. We replaced the Excel12.xlxs with a correct version.

But with every update for Office (every month), the file is replaced with a the arab Version again.

Do you know why we get the wrong "template" an how to change it permanent?

Best regards

Vito