Office file associations

[Steve Bright]

Hi all

I am running Windows 2000. Recently another user on this
computer upgraded to Office XP from Office 2000 and now I
get strange behavior with my file associations.

The associations for Word/Excel appear to be correct but
when I attempt to open a .doc or .xls document from
windows explorer (either by double clicking or using
the "open with" menu item) nothing happens if I am not
currently running the app. If say Excel is running, then I
click the same xls file it will open.

Any suggestion to restore the office application launching
would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Steve Bright

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Steve,

You can use the following commands to recreate the file associations:

winword /r
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

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

 

[Steve Bright]

Reregistering has no effect.

Since documents open when the appropriate app is running I
suspect that this is not a file association issue but
rather something else to do with office.

Steve

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Steve,

If the document opens properly when the application is running then
all that means is there isn't a problem with the file name portion of
the Registered File Type but rather the "Application used to perform
action" command. (Typically a symptom of a problem with the file name
is breaking on file names containing spaces.)

When you open a file outside the application, other than using
File/Open, the Registered File type is used to tell your OS which
application to use for opening the file and how to open the file. IOW,
your OS is still responsible for opening the file - not the
application. Given the fact that your OS is able to find the
application when it is running then I'd say there is a problem in the
path to the executable.

If you are encountering an error in opening a file using File/Open
then it would indicate a problem with the Office application.

I've encountered a time or two when I needed to delete the Registered
File Type and re-register the application to recreate the file
association. Open an Exploring Window, go to Tools/Folder Options,
select the File Types tab, locate Microsoft Word Document and
Microsoft Excel Worksheet, and delete them. (Don't worry - I've done
this hundreds of times. ) Then re-register the applications using
my previous instructions.

Also note you should exit the application prior to running the
/regserver command.

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton

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