Strange Problem

[Guest]

One of my customers has, to me, a very perplexing problem. They can execute
Excel, and open spreadsheets via the File>Open menu (or the folder button),
but when they double click on a spreadsheet file (such as with Windows
Explorer), Excel opens, but the document DOES NOT. This is also true when
trying to open spreadsheet e-mail attachments. They're currently using a
work-around, by saving the attachment, opening Excel, then opening the saved
spreadsheet. This is a real headache for them.

According to them, this just started happening recently. I've reinstalled
MS Office XP Professional twice, but no help. Is there some setting
somewhere that they may have inadvertently changed which causes this?

They're using Windows XP Home SP2.

 

[Don Guillett]

I always save the attachment and then open from excel. Best to do the same.

 

[Guest]

They don't like to do that, that's why they consulted me to try to fix the
problem. This is a very busy, e-mail dependent, real estate firm, and
they've trained their data entry operators to open the attachments by double
clicking on the attachment (sometimes there are numerous ones attached to a
single e-mail). It worked up until last week, so something must have changed
or happened. I really need to be able to fix the problem, but I'm out of
ideas. Can someone help me please?

 

[Dave Peterson]

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.

Maybe one of these will work for your clients.