"Document is already open" Message

[Ted Smith]

I have Office 97 Professional. I used it successfully on a Win95 machine,
but when I upgraded and installed it on WinXP it has an annoying hiccup.
Whenever I double click on a MSWord document it opens the document fine, but
immediately produces the error message , "'Filename" is being used by Ted
Smith' Do you want to make a copy?" I just hit escape to get rid of the
message and everything is OK from then on. Similiarly, when I double click
on an Excel document I get an error message indicating that the document is
already open, and that I can't open two documents with the same name, blah
blah blah. Does anyone know a fix for this problem??

Ted Smith

 

[Jack Gillis]

I no longer have '97 installed but as I recall I solved this problem by:

Clicking Start -> Run
Type "winword.exe/regserver" without the quotes and click on OK.

You might have to unregister winword first if that doesn't work by
itself. To do that,
Type "winword.exe/regserver" without the quotes and click on OK.

Then repeat the first step.

It is worth a try.

 

[Beth Melton]

A couple slight correction in the commands:

winword /regserver

Note the space before the forward slash. Also, Word supports the
abbreviated switch: winword /r

To unregister Word:

winword /unregserver

Again, note the space before the forward slash.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Ted Smith]

Thank you very much! That took care of the problem with MS Word.
But MS Excel still has the same problem. Any ideas on how to fix that??

Ted Smith

 

[Beth Melton]

You're more than welcome.

The same command works for Excel as well (and the rest of the Office
apps). However only Word supports the abbreviated switch so use:

excel /regserver

Note the space before the forward slash.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Ted Smith]

Wow!! You're a genius. Worked perfectly.
I'm sure that I will eventually need to "fix" the other Office apps someday
so maybe you could briefly include those commands as well - IF you have
time.
Sure appreciate all your help so far!

Ted Smith

 

[Beth Melton]

Well...can't say I'm a genius - simply something I picked up way back
when in the newsgroups. Far easier than manually modifying the file
types as I used to do.

Here's the complete list for all of the Office apps:

winword /r
excel /regserver
powerpnt /regserver
msaccess /regserver

Note the space before the forward slash.

Also, since you are using Office 97 if you encounter this issue again
should be able to use the following command to recreate the file
associations for all of the applications. (It will also recreate
various Registry information)

Go to Start/Run and run:

D:\Setup /y /r

Note you need to replace D:\ with your installation source if
necessary. If in doubt, use the Browse command to navigation to
Setup.exe on your installation CD/source and then back on the Run
command add the switches. If the command path contains quotes the
switches need to be placed outside the quotes. Also, as with the
/regserver switch, you need a space before each forward slash.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/