Selecting Help, Detect and Repair, may fix the issue.

rickhaberstroh wrote:

Trying to free up hard drive space and inadvertently created situation which
requires reinstalling excel software in order for excel to open properly. A
smaller window appears and seems to be looking for something. This goes on
for some minutes and finally allows me to open and use the spreadsheet but
this waiting on the windows installer is inefficient for me. Any suggestions
on fixing this situation?