How to make toolbars static with IE7

[Robert]

We have a third-party software package that runs in the browser (in our case,
IE7, now that it's been forced on us). Within that third-party software, we
can export to Excel. When that occurs, Excel is instantiated within the
browser.

In IE6, we could select View-->Toolbars-->Standard (or Formatting,
whatever...the usual Excel toolbars) and select the ones we wanted to see
whenever Excel was instantiated within the browser. Once chosen, they were
visible whenever an export to Excel occurred.

In IE7, EVERY SINGLE TIME WE EXPORT TO EXCEL, we must select
View-->Toolbars-->Standard (or Formatting, whatever...the usual Excel
toolbars) and select the ones we want to see. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

There doesn't appear to be any way to make the selected Excel toolbars static.

I have already contacted the third-party software vendor and they have
confirmed that, once exported, the data then belong to the browser and are
within the browser's control.

Does anyone have any idea what (if anything) I'm missing? Or, is this a
defect?

I've searched the internet for any help or confirmation of the defect and
I've seen nothing.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Robert

 

[Dave Peterson]

I'd do my best to not let MSIE open the file:

How to Configure Internet Explorer to Open Office
Documents in the Appropriate Office Program Instead of in Internet Explorer
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=162059

 

[Robert]

I should also add the we have investigated the issues with the Excel*.xlb
file. Renaming (in our case) Excel11.xlb to Excel11.xlb.old and restarting
Excel does nothing to resolve this issue.

Robert

 

[Robert]

I wanted to let you know that there are two work-arounds.

1. Once the grid is exported and the IE7 browser has instantiated Excel, the
user can right-click on the tab bar just to the right of the last tab (the
"New Tab" tab) and select "Show Document Tools" and the Excel toolbars that
the user has selected as the defaults within Excel itself will be shown. As
far as I can tell, this option only appears when exporting to an Office
Product.

As an aside, the toolbar selections that are subsequently shown are located
in the user's Excel*.xlb file (the "*" represents the version of Excel and
will change based on the version of Excel installed on the PC, e.g., in my
case, I have "Microsoft Office Excel 2003 (11.8120.8122) SP2" so my file is
Excel11.xlb). There are lots of entries on the web on how to reset the .xlb
file if it becomes corrupted.

2. The second method is user-specific and involves forcing the grid to Excel
rather than to a new instantiation of the browser. This is detailed in
Microsoft Knowledge Base article 162059 at
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=162059. The article lists two methods. One
is a Registry change but the other is much easier because it uses the Windows
Folder Tool. See the article for details. (Thanks to Dave Peterson for this
information).

Robert