file path spaces

[Boliver]

I recently reinstalled Office 97 on Windows XP. If I double click a file
(either Word of Excel), the program starts but it then tries to load every
group of letters between spaces in the path as a file with the proper
extension added . It says that file could not be found, ckeck spelling,
path,etc. Hiting OK picks up the next set of letters and so on until it finds
the file name part of the path and the file loads correctly. Depending on
the path name, I hit OK up to six or seven times. Something tells me I should
know this one the solution escapes me.

 

[Beth Melton]

The problem lies in the file associations. To recreate them, go to Start/Run
and run the following:

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

Note the space before the forward slash.

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

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

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

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

 

[Boliver]

That did the trick. Thank you for your timely response.

 

[Beth Melton]

You're welcome.

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

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

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

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

 

[Jay Freedman]

(For hard-core geeks...) The immediate cause of the problem is that the
quote marks have somehow been removed from the DDE message that Explorer
passes to WinWord, which should be

[REM _DDE_Direct][FileOpen("%1")]

The command for Excel is similar. I've seen this happen, but never been able
to pin down what removes the quotes.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Beth Melton]

FWIW, DDE doesn't have to be enabled. The "%1" can appear at the end of the
path.

Also, based on my experiance, I've found it best to let the application
recreate the file associations (using the /regserver switch) -- especially
for Excel. For some reason the command appears to be correct but it still
doesn't function.

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

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

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

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

(For hard-core geeks...) The immediate cause of the problem is that the
quote marks have somehow been removed from the DDE message that Explorer
passes to WinWord, which should be

[REM _DDE_Direct][FileOpen("%1")]

The command for Excel is similar. I've seen this happen, but never been
able to pin down what removes the quotes.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so all may benefit.

The problem lies in the file associations. To recreate them, go to
Start/Run and run the following:

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

Note the space before the forward slash.

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

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

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

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