cannot launch Excel via Word (or vice versa)

[Chris Bailey]

Something odd a client of mine reported to me today. She's using Word and
Excel 2004 on a Mac running OS X 10.3.4 with all the latest security
updates. Apparently, there was a feature in Office that I never knew about
-- in that, if you're in Word and go to File/Open, you can select an Excel
file and it will ask if you want to open the file in Excel or in Word. The
same thing works in Excel -- you can use it to open a Word file, or cause it
to launch Word and open that file for you.

However, she reported this week that when she tries to do this (say she's in
Word and tells it to open an Excel document), it won't work unless Excel is
already launched. If Excel is not running and you say "launch Excel", you
get the message "Couldn't launch Microsoft Excel". If Excel is already
active, it opens the document just fine.

I'm wondering if this is somehow tied to security update 2004-06-07 from
Apple, which does this:

Mac OS X will now present an approval alert when an application is to be run
for the first time either by opening a document or clicking on a URL related
to the application.

As this is the only thing I've changed on her computer recently that had any
effect on launching programs, I'm wondering if it's connected. I have
already "primed" the computer by double-clicking on an Excel file and giving
the computer approval to open .XLS files using Excel, but my gut tells me
this security update is still connected.

Anyone got any ideas on this? Can confirm or deny the issue? Thanks.

 

[matt neuburg]

Something odd a client of mine reported to me today. She's using Word and
Excel 2004 on a Mac running OS X 10.3.4 with all the latest security
updates. Apparently, there was a feature in Office that I never knew about
-- in that, if you're in Word and go to File/Open, you can select an Excel
file and it will ask if you want to open the file in Excel or in Word. The
same thing works in Excel -- you can use it to open a Word file, or cause it
to launch Word and open that file for you.

However, she reported this week that when she tries to do this (say she's in
Word and tells it to open an Excel document), it won't work unless Excel is
already launched. If Excel is not running and you say "launch Excel", you
get the message "Couldn't launch Microsoft Excel". If Excel is already
active, it opens the document just fine.

I'm wondering if this is somehow tied to security update 2004-06-07 from
Apple, which does this:

I doubt that it's related. I have that security update installed, but
the cross-launching feature works fine OMM. m.