Excel opening multiple files & applications

[Rick]

When opening Excel appliction, the program will automatically try to
open multiple recent files.... even if they are not excel files.

It will also try to open, inside the excel program, the other Office
Application files for Word, Powerpoint, Entourage & Excel.

When it tries to do this , a period of seveal minutes will go by for
each application, with a message for each application file, that it
has not loaded completely. The message can be cleared, and the file
closed without saving.
Obviously, this is a very annoying thing to deal with.

I cannot find any settings, I may have changed that is causing this.
The other office applications do not do this when opened.

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

When opening Excel appliction, the program will automatically try to
open multiple recent files.... even if they are not excel files.

It will also try to open, inside the excel program, the other Office
Application files for Word, Powerpoint, Entourage & Excel.

When it tries to do this , a period of seveal minutes will go by for
each application, with a message for each application file, that it
has not loaded completely. The message can be cleared, and the file
closed without saving.
Obviously, this is a very annoying thing to deal with.

I cannot find any settings, I may have changed that is causing this.
The other office applications do not do this when opened.

Excel will try to open every file in its primary and alternate
Startup folders on launch - if they're not XL files, it will try to
open the applicable application.

The primary startup folder is

HD:Applications:Microsoft Office N:Office:Startup:Excel:

(where HD is your hard drive name and N is your version, since you
didn't specify). Check there for files or aliases.

An alternate startup folder, if it exists, is specified in the
Preferences/General/Alternate startup file location: input box. If
you've entered a path there, any file in that path will be opened.
From what you wrote, it sounds like the Office application folder
was specified.