default to excel 2002 instead of 2007 (Excel 2002)

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Hello, I am trying to solve a unique situation for a customer. The customer has Excel 2002 and Excel 2007 on the same machine. I forgot the exact reason why the user needed Excel 2007 but it had to do something with being able to crunch more numbers on a line and Excel 2007 allowed him to do that. He would like Excel 2002 to be his default when he opens Excel documents, but right now, all excel documents open in Excel 2007. I tried the following to try to get Excel 2002 to be his default but was unsuccessful. Hoping someone can provide me a good answer to workaround this problem. Thanks for any assistance.

Things i tried:
1) Windows Explorer>Folder Options>File types> change .xls documents to point to c:programfiles>Office>10>Excel.exe — this did not work for some reason
2) Right-click Excel file>open with>and browsed c:program files>office>10>excel (2002 version)–this did not work

What i might have to do: un-install Excel 2007 from ADD/remove and have user add it back when it is needed.

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I think opening a workbook from Windows Explorer will start the most recently used version of Excel – each time you start a version of Excel, it makes itself the default.
You could provide the user with shortcuts to Excel 2002 and to Excel 2007, on the desktop and in the Quick Launch toolbar.
You could also place shortcuts to both versions in the user’s SendTo folder (C:Documents and SettingsSendTo) so that the user can right-click a workbook and open it in the preferred version.

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Hi Hans,

Thanks for your reply. I tried opening the Excel documents in Windows Explorer but it kept on defaulting to Excel 2007. It didn’t matter which Excel version i opened up first, it would just open all spreasheets in 2007. The shortcuts on the desktop may be my only solution. The user will have to open up Excel 2002 and then browse for the document if the user wants to work in Excel 2002. Same goes for Excel 2007. I also tried your suggestion of placing the shortcuts into the “SendTO” folder; but after placing the shortcuts in that folder and right clicking on an Excel spreadsheet, there was no listing for any of the Excel versions. They were in the SendTo folder, but they did not show up in the SendTo command.

Another thought is that the user receives a lot of Excel attachments in Outlook, and everytime the user opens it, it will open in Excel 2007 instead of Excel 2002. I guess the user will have to save the document first before viewing it and then open up Excel 2002 and then browse for the file. Thanks for your suggestions, i really appreciate it. If you have any other ideas, please let me know.

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It is better to save attachments to disk anyway – opening attachments directly from an e-mail may clutter up the user’s temporary download folder.

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