How to disable specific Excel 2010 add-ins at startup?

Question:

I want to disable specific add-ins from loading in Excel 2010 every time I open up a new workbook or instance. How do I achieve this?

When I disable the specific add-ins by unchecking them in the normal Options menu, they still load when I open a new Excel.

Answer:

You can modify the LoadBehavior value in the registry for a particular Excel add-in to change its load behavior.

To modify the load behavior so the add-in is disabled when Excel opens, find the following path in registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins

All of your addins should be listed there. Click on a particular addin to see the registry values. A REG_DWORD value present in all of them is LoadBehavior and you can set it to disable automatic loading by right-clicking the LoadBehavior key > Modify... and entering a value of 0.

Here is a Microsoft link describing the other load behaviors: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386106.aspx#LoadBehavior