Excel 2007 : Make excel 2007 default

[superbob]

Hi,

I have excel 2003 and 2007 installed on my machine but I only want excels files to open in 2007 when I double click on them. Currently, excel 2003 files will open in excel 2003 and excel 2007 files will open in excel 2007. I want to make 2007 the default version for excel. Any ideas?

Cheers

[romperstomper]

Right-click in Explorer, choose Open With, specify Excel 2007 (browse to it if required) and check the 'always use this program...' option.

[shg]

I'm interested to see if that works for superbob. Both times I installed 2007, I was unable to get workbooks to open by default in 2003 (my preference) except by doing Detect & Repair on 2003. Explorer happily accepted my (Always) Open With 2003, but persisted with 2007.

[royUK]

I thought Excel opened according to the order it was installed,so if 2007 was installed last that became the default

[Marcol]

Interesting.

When I temporarily installed 2007 on my laptop, where I need to keep 2003, all files defaulted to 2007. I just assumed that the default was the newer version.

[shg]

My point was, the Explorer Always Open With didn't work.

I also tried some unregsrvr thing that failed.

[romperstomper]

To set 2003 as the default, it will normally work if you run:
"C:\program files\microsoft office\office11\excel.exe" /unregserver
then
"C:\program files\microsoft office\office11\excel.exe" /regserver

as this will reset the registry entries (you can also do it by hand if necessary). I read a post in the MVP newsgroup the other day that suggested that the (un)regserver switches no longer work with 2007 but I confess I have not had occasion to test that. I should also confess that for once I have not actually tested the answer I gave originally, so apologies if it does not work!

[superbob]

Hi, the open with option did not work for me either. Any other ideas? I'm thinking that removing 2003 might resolve the issue but ideally, I'd like to keep both versions of excel.

[romperstomper]

According to the product team, the regserver switch has indeed been removed from 2007, but running the Repair option on 2007 (from the Add/Remove programs in Control Panel) should do the same thing.
My experience at the moment (on Win XP) is that whichever version of Excel I have open and active (if I have both open) is the one that my files open in.

[superbob]

I've noticed that if I have excel 2007 open and then double click on any version of excel it will open in 2007. Not ideal but it's better than removing 2003 from my machine.

[royUK]

I find that whichever version I have open then all workbooks open in that, I do have the 2007 to 2003 converter installed.

As 2007 was my last install if Excel is not open then all workbooks automatically default to 2007