If I click on any Excel file, ie, foo.xls, it tries to reinstall
Excel. Pop-up windows appear about installing Excel, then "please
insert your Office Professional 2000 SR1 Disk 1". When I cancel, I get
"This file foo.xls does not have a program associated with it".

However, if I drag the foo.xls file onto the Excel shortcut icon, it
loads fine. Likewise I can open Excel and select File -> Open. I
checked the file associations under Folder -> Options, and even
recreated it, to no effect.

The last time this happened, I reinstalled Excel and that fixed it.
However my client is far away and this isn't practical. This seems to
happen every couple years or so. I figure this is some kind of
registry fix. No other Office programs such as Word are afflicted with
this.

Thanks, Chris

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 14 Apr 2006 00:04 PDT

Chris...

If you open Windows Explorer, navigate to the location of foo.xls
and right-click on the file, what is the uppermost and/or bolded
option that shows in the context menu. It should be 'Open'.

If you see 'Install' instead, or something else, let me know.
If this is the case, the file associations for Excel, under
Folder -> Options, should reflect this same option under the
Advanced menu. Making sure that Open is highlighted as the
default action should help, if possible.

Let me know what you find, and where this takes you...

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by chrissfbay-ga on 14 Apr 2006 12:21 PDT

Sublime1, 
The uppermost option is "Open" and is highlighted as default, which if
I select, tries to install Excel. Same with the "Open with ..  Excel"
option.

Thanks, 
Chris

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 14 Apr 2006 13:18 PDT

Chris...

Okay...if you go to the file associations under Folder Options,
there will be, under the XLS filetype Advanced menu, a list of
actions, one of which is 'open', and one of which is highlighted
as the default action - presumably 'open'. You might wish to take
a look at the script for the action 'open' and see what it looks
like.

I think you can fix this by doing something I did awhile back.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you tried to repair the 
association by right-clicking the foo.xls file, selecting 
'open with' and then choosing Excel from the list of programs
with icons under the "Choose the program you want to use to
open foo.xls" dialog.

What I'd like you to try instead is to check the box that
says "Always use this program to open these files", and 
then click the 'Other' button, and browse to the location
of your Excel executable file, which is probably:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe

Select that and back out of all the dialogs, clicking OK,
and try clicking on foo.xls again. If I'm right, it will
now open in Excel, and the script for the action 'open',
under the XLS filetype under Folder Options -> Filetypes
will read:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe %1

Let me know if this resolves your problem...

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by chrissfbay-ga on 15 Apr 2006 09:05 PDT

Sublime1, I browsed for the excel.exe directly and it was the same as
listed and didn't affect the problem. However, I also looked at
scripts under the "Advanced" options as you suggested and found the
following:

Action: Open
Application Used .... "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE" /e 
Use DDE: (checked)
DDE Message: [open("%1")]
Application: Excel

On a whim I appended "%1" to the end of the Application Used string,
and it worked! I don't know why it needs that now ...

So thanks, problem solved, and please mark this answered. 

Best, 

Chris

Chris...

Thanks very much for acknowledging my work as your answer.
I'll repost it here for the sake of future readers, and to
formalize the answer.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Okay...if you go to the file associations under Folder Options,
there will be, under the XLS filetype Advanced menu, a list of
actions, one of which is 'open', and one of which is highlighted
as the default action - presumably 'open'. You might wish to take
a look at the script for the action 'open' and see what it looks
like.

I think you can fix this by doing something I did awhile back.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you tried to repair the 
association by right-clicking the foo.xls file, selecting 
'open with' and then choosing Excel from the list of programs
with icons under the "Choose the program you want to use to
open foo.xls" dialog.

What I'd like you to try instead is to check the box that
says "Always use this program to open these files", and 
then click the 'Other' button, and browse to the location
of your Excel executable file, which is probably:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe

Select that and back out of all the dialogs, clicking OK,
and try clicking on foo.xls again. If I'm right, it will
now open in Excel, and the script for the action 'open',
under the XLS filetype under Folder Options -> Filetypes
will read:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe %1

----------------------------------------------------------

Since you found "Use DDE" still checked in the Advanced
dialog AFTER clicking the "Other" button and navigating to
the executable file, I now realize that when I applied the
solution, I had deleted the "Open" command from the menu,
prior to replacing it by navigating to the executable file.

Deleting the original "Open" command removes the "Use DDE"
and "DDE Message: [open("%1")]" from the script and simply
uses the command line script, and often resolves this issue.

My impression has always been that, if "Use DDE" is selected,
then the "DDE Message" adds the necessary "%1" to the script,
but for some reason this seems to stop working after some 
time, in Excel, so it becomes necessary to use the command
line script to open files.

Doing what you did, and adding %1 to the end of the command
line, probably does the same thing as removing "Use DDE", and
negates DDE, taking it out of the process.

For a discussion of file open scripts, using both command line
and DDE, see this page from Microsoft:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/fileassociations/fa_verbs.asp?frame=true&hidetoc=true

Anyway, I'm glad the problem is resolved!

Best regards...

sublime1-ga

I thought the process of inquiry and descriptive and friendly
thoroughness of narrative was outstanding; I particularly appreciated
the extra link to "Verb and file associations".

Thanks very much for the rating, Chris!