Bizarre - can't double click to open Excel files

My company recently upgraded to 2003. Since the upgrade, I have been unable to open an excel file in any way except through the open file dialog in Excel itself. If I click on an icon (either on my desktop or an attachment in an email), I get a pause, a jpeg of an adobe icon gets copied into my clipboard and then a few seconds later, I get a message that the file can not be found.

Everything else seems to work fine, all my models and files work fine, all my links work fine and I have virus scanned / spyware scanned left right and center.

MY IT guys have given up and are now avoiding me. Anyone have any ideas? This is very annoying.

It sounds like Adobe stole the file association.

I try this first:

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.

If that doesn't work...

Open windows explorer
find a .xls file
shift rightlclick on it
choose "open With"
browse for excel.exe
and make sure you check that box at the bottom (to always use the selected
program to open this type of file).

aseanor wrote:
>
> My company recently upgraded to 2003. Since the upgrade, I have been
> unable to open an excel file in any way except through the open file
> dialog in Excel itself. If I click on an icon (either on my desktop or
> an attachment in an email), I get a pause, a jpeg of an adobe icon gets
> copied into my clipboard and then a few seconds later, I get a message
> that the file can not be found.
>
> Everything else seems to work fine, all my models and files work fine,
> all my links work fine and I have virus scanned / spyware scanned left
> right and center.
>
> MY IT guys have given up and are now avoiding me. Anyone have any
> ideas? This is very annoying.
>
> --
> aseanor
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> aseanor's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=29161
> View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=488820

--

Dave Peterson

That wasn't it though. I think I have it working now. A friend came through with a simple idea.

It was actually that the check box - ignore other applications that was checked in tools/options. Not sure how that happened - probably an errant click when setting up excel.

The adobe picture still gets added to the clipboard everytime I open excel. But I can live with that. Can't figure that one out.