It's a small frustration, but it's one that speaks to a larger truth: the tools we use every day should meet us where we are, not force us to navigate around their defaults. The user who posted this question did everything right, they checked the preferences, confirmed the right box was ticked, and still Excel opened to a blank workbook instead of the gallery that shows templates and recent files. That's not a user error. That's a design gap, and it's one that too many of us have just learned to live with.
The practical takeaway here is simple: the path of least resistance in software isn't always the path that makes sense for your workflow. For this user, the goal isn't to avoid work, it's to start work in the right place. A blank Book1 might be fine for a quick note, but for anyone who relies on templates, past projects, or a curated set of starting points, that blank page is a dead end. It adds an extra step to every single session, and over time, those steps compound into real friction. The fact that the preference toggle doesn't behave as expected only deepens the confusion, because it gives the impression that the feature is broken when it's more likely a quirk of how the app launches from the dock.
What's telling is that this question has clearly been asked before, and the answer still isn't obvious. That's not a knock on the user, it's a signal that the solution, if one exists, isn't discoverable. And when a tool like Excel, which is so deeply embedded in how people work, hides its own functionality behind obscure settings or platform-specific behavior, it undermines the very thing it promises: productivity. The user shouldn't have to dig through forums or second-guess their setup to get a basic behavior to stick.
So here's the concrete point: if you're on a Mac and Excel keeps opening to a blank workbook despite your preferences, the issue is likely tied to how the dock icon is launching the app, not the preference itself. The fix may involve using the "Open" menu within Excel first, or adjusting how the app is launched from the dock, but the fact that this isn't clearly documented is exactly the kind of friction that makes people feel like they're fighting their tools instead of using them. For now, the most practical step is to test whether opening Excel from within the app, rather than from the dock, respects your settings. If it does, you've found the culprit. If it doesn't, it's worth treating the dock shortcut as the issue and replacing it with a custom launch path. It's not elegant, but it's honest, and it gets you back to the work that actually matters.