Open Text Files in Excel, Changed Behavior

[acbservices]

For years I have opened text files in Excel using the right-click
"Open With..." in Windows. The files opened without triggering the
Import Text Wizard and were imported in one column. As of yesterday
(without any apparent changes to Excel or Windows), this behavior
changed. Now when text files are opened using "Open With...", Excel
"figures out" where it thinks the columns breaks should be. (Again the
Import Text Wizard is not triggered opening files this way.)

I've searched for settings that determine how Excel opens text files
by default, but found none.

Any ideas on how to go back to right-click opening the "one-column"
text files?

Thank you,
Patrick

 

[acbservices]

Sorry, I forgot to include... I'm running Windows XP and Excel 2003.

Patrick

 

[pbartleby]

I wound up solving this by reinstalling Excel. One of the Office
updates likely created the change. I will post if I can figure out
which update is involved.

-Patrick

 

[pnosko]

Patrick, thanks for posting this so I know I wasn't the only one
affected. It was in fact a recent security update that broke this
functionality.

In my control panel, it is listed as "Security Update for Excel 2003
(KB943985)v2:EXCEL".

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943985

When I removed this update, it worked as before. Proceed with caution.

Pete

 

[yogesthebare]

Pete,
I actually had to uninstall V1 and V2 of the below patch to get it to work
again ..

Carl