A
Alex Zimmerhaven
Hi,
I wanted to post a fix to a common problem I've seen. There are many posts
on the internet concerning this but I've only seen the true fix once. Here's
the problem, someone installs Office 2007 and then when they try to double
click on an Excel file, it opens Excel but the Excel file itself does not
open. So, you are left looking at the Excel 2007 screen, but it is blank
with no workbooks open (not even the default one that usually opens). Here
is the official Microsoft solution: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924074 -
however, this only fixes about 20% of the cases. This is where you adjust
the DDE setting.
Of course, you can leave Excel open and then doubleclick but nobody wants to
that. And you can to "Office Button" Open and open that way, but nobody
wants to do that all the time.
A user named Glaswegian posted the fix which solved the problem. His post
is the only one I could find anywhere. So, I have to give him credit for
solving this. You can find his response here:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/mic.../168818-unable-open-excel-2007-documents.html
Here's the problem that no one seems to have figured out. The reason Excel
is not opening is because it's hitting a startup directory file which it
cannot resolve and so it stops there.
Here is the location for the offending files I've fixed 3 of my users' pcs
with:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\XLSTART
In most cases they had XLA files in that directory which were hold overs
from a previous install or a program whose toolbar add-in is not supported in
this version. I think one of them is PDFMaker.xla (holdover from a previous
version of Adobe Acrobat) - these different XLA files are probably not
compliant with Office 2007 - hence the problem. To fix this issue, I just
create a folder within this directory and move them into that directory so
they are not getting hit on the startup of Excel 2007. Of course, if a user
needs that XLA to start then you are going to have to find a workaround.
Typically if they are running anything less than Adobe Acrobat 8 (assuming
this is the offending XLA), then the file won't work and will keep Excel 2007
from opening fully, because the Excel 2007 ribbon will not display buttons
for anything under Acrobat 8. Keep in mind - if you are running Acrobat 8
you have to run all of the updates to see the buttons in the ribbon (they
show up on a seperate tab).
Of course, the DDE example (see MS article above) does resolve a few of the
cases, so I'm not ruling it out.
Also - let me tell you about a totally wrong approach to this problem. If
you open up windows explorer/my computer and then go to Tools/Folder
Options/File Types - then you are going to be barking up the wrong tree in
trying adjust what programs open which file extensions. What's worse is that
if you make a certain change there - it won't let you reset the change and
you get a bunch of bizarre error messages. So, it gets to a point where you
have to un-install Office 2007 and re-install Office 2007 - and I can't
remember if the "repair" option even worked. So, watch out going down that
path, there be a lot of pain in that.
Thanks again to Glaswegian!
-Alex Zimmerhaven
I wanted to post a fix to a common problem I've seen. There are many posts
on the internet concerning this but I've only seen the true fix once. Here's
the problem, someone installs Office 2007 and then when they try to double
click on an Excel file, it opens Excel but the Excel file itself does not
open. So, you are left looking at the Excel 2007 screen, but it is blank
with no workbooks open (not even the default one that usually opens). Here
is the official Microsoft solution: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924074 -
however, this only fixes about 20% of the cases. This is where you adjust
the DDE setting.
Of course, you can leave Excel open and then doubleclick but nobody wants to
that. And you can to "Office Button" Open and open that way, but nobody
wants to do that all the time.
A user named Glaswegian posted the fix which solved the problem. His post
is the only one I could find anywhere. So, I have to give him credit for
solving this. You can find his response here:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/mic.../168818-unable-open-excel-2007-documents.html
Here's the problem that no one seems to have figured out. The reason Excel
is not opening is because it's hitting a startup directory file which it
cannot resolve and so it stops there.
Here is the location for the offending files I've fixed 3 of my users' pcs
with:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\XLSTART
In most cases they had XLA files in that directory which were hold overs
from a previous install or a program whose toolbar add-in is not supported in
this version. I think one of them is PDFMaker.xla (holdover from a previous
version of Adobe Acrobat) - these different XLA files are probably not
compliant with Office 2007 - hence the problem. To fix this issue, I just
create a folder within this directory and move them into that directory so
they are not getting hit on the startup of Excel 2007. Of course, if a user
needs that XLA to start then you are going to have to find a workaround.
Typically if they are running anything less than Adobe Acrobat 8 (assuming
this is the offending XLA), then the file won't work and will keep Excel 2007
from opening fully, because the Excel 2007 ribbon will not display buttons
for anything under Acrobat 8. Keep in mind - if you are running Acrobat 8
you have to run all of the updates to see the buttons in the ribbon (they
show up on a seperate tab).
Of course, the DDE example (see MS article above) does resolve a few of the
cases, so I'm not ruling it out.
Also - let me tell you about a totally wrong approach to this problem. If
you open up windows explorer/my computer and then go to Tools/Folder
Options/File Types - then you are going to be barking up the wrong tree in
trying adjust what programs open which file extensions. What's worse is that
if you make a certain change there - it won't let you reset the change and
you get a bunch of bizarre error messages. So, it gets to a point where you
have to un-install Office 2007 and re-install Office 2007 - and I can't
remember if the "repair" option even worked. So, watch out going down that
path, there be a lot of pain in that.
Thanks again to Glaswegian!
-Alex Zimmerhaven