explorer doesn't activate excel files only starts excel programme

Hi, I have recently upgraded to MS Office Pro 2003, which is fine exept that
I cannot seem to access excel files from explore or my computer. All that
happens is I get the programme with a blank screen. I can get the file I want
by the usual file/open etc but this isn't much use for quick picks. Anybody
got any ideas about what I can do?

Regards

Sometimes one of these works when you're having trouble with double clicking on
the file in windows explorer:

Tools|Options|General|Ignore other applications (uncheck it)

--- or ---

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.

gandalf wrote:

Hi, I have recently upgraded to MS Office Pro 2003, which is fine exept that
I cannot seem to access excel files from explore or my computer. All that
happens is I get the programme with a blank screen. I can get the file I want
by the usual file/open etc but this isn't much use for quick picks. Anybody
got any ideas about what I can do?

Regards

--

Dave Peterson

Nice try but no luck with this gremlin

"Dave Peterson" wrote:


Sometimes one of these works when you're having trouble with double clicking on
the file in windows explorer:

Tools|Options|General|Ignore other applications (uncheck it)

--- or ---

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.

gandalf wrote:

Hi, I have recently upgraded to MS Office Pro 2003, which is fine exept that
I cannot seem to access excel files from explore or my computer. All that
happens is I get the programme with a blank screen. I can get the file I want
by the usual file/open etc but this isn't much use for quick picks. Anybody
got any ideas about what I can do?

Regards

--

Dave Peterson

Sorry Dave, I got it wrong I didn't shut down all copies of excel. It now
works fine, thanks for your help.

"gandalf" wrote:

Nice try but no luck with this gremlin

"Dave Peterson" wrote:


Sometimes one of these works when you're having trouble with double clicking on
the file in windows explorer:

Tools|Options|General|Ignore other applications (uncheck it)

--- or ---

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.

gandalf wrote:

Hi, I have recently upgraded to MS Office Pro 2003, which is fine exept that
I cannot seem to access excel files from explore or my computer. All that
happens is I get the programme with a blank screen. I can get the file I want
by the usual file/open etc but this isn't much use for quick picks. Anybody
got any ideas about what I can do?

Regards

--

Dave Peterson

One gremlin out of the way. Don't feed the remaining after midnight!

gandalf wrote:

Sorry Dave, I got it wrong I didn't shut down all copies of excel. It now
works fine, thanks for your help.

"gandalf" wrote:

Nice try but no luck with this gremlin

"Dave Peterson" wrote:


Sometimes one of these works when you're having trouble with double clicking on
the file in windows explorer:

Tools|Options|General|Ignore other applications (uncheck it)

--- or ---

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.

gandalf wrote:

Hi, I have recently upgraded to MS Office Pro 2003, which is fine exept that
I cannot seem to access excel files from explore or my computer. All that
happens is I get the programme with a blank screen. I can get the file I want
by the usual file/open etc but this isn't much use for quick picks. Anybody
got any ideas about what I can do?

Regards

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson

I think I have figured out this stupid Excel thing.

Excel has this bast%^%^ized MDI SDI thing.

I think most people run Excel with it's child Window Maximized (which
makes it really confusing).

So when you click on another file it switches to that file, hides the
other window but adds another icon on your task bar giving you the
feeling you started another instance of excel (but it didn't !!). I've
been burned by this too many times and shutdown what I thought was one
instance of excel turned out to be all of them. Word does not behave
this way.

So there is an option to disable this feature called "Ignore Other
Applications" (under Options- General). If you look at the help on
this it basically shuts of DDE. What DDE basically does is when you
click on a file it checks to see if Excel is already running and if it
is, it passes the file to that already running instance. The problem
with shutting this swicth off is the file mappings that are already
installed assume DDE is on and things break. So when you shut that
option off you suddenly start getting errors that Excel cannot find the
file.

To fix this go into your File Explorer (My Computer) and Choose Folder
- Options - File Type. Find XLS and select it, then click advanced
button. Now Select the "Open" Action and choose Edit button. Now this
is the trick, shutoff DDE by unchecking it. Then edit the end of the
action. The end should be something like this (note the "%1") and note
there must be a space between the /e and the first quote.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"

Now this allows you to create a SEPERATE instance of excel everytime
you click on an Excel file. And when you close that excel instance it
has no impact on any other. It also gets rid of the I can't find the
file problem. In some cases you will see a %1 without the quotes. That
causes the problem that excel can't find files when the path has spaces
in it.

You may want to repeat this for other files types that maps to Excel.
Like .CSV

Correction:

The problem with turning THIS SWITCH ON is the file mappings that are
already
installed assume DDE is on and things break.

If you have it unchecked (default behavior) you get the funky
SDI/MDIExcel Instance behavior.

If you check it, you get the more logical MDI/SDI/Excel Instance
behavior but the file type mappings must be fixed as I described above.

This happened to me and I finally found the fix today!!

the problem was that in the options of excel, in the general tab, the
"ignore other applications" was ticked on. problem solved by ticking it off.



"mswlogo" wrote:

Correction:

The problem with turning THIS SWITCH ON is the file mappings that are
already
installed assume DDE is on and things break.

If you have it unchecked (default behavior) you get the funky
SDI/MDIExcel Instance behavior.

If you check it, you get the more logical MDI/SDI/Excel Instance
behavior but the file type mappings must be fixed as I described above.