Opening Excel files with 2003, not 2007 (2003 & 2007)

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I have recently loaded Office 2007 on to my computer retaining all of Office 2003 that was there before. I want to open my Excel files with the 2003 program, but when I double-click on the file, 2007 opens it. I tried right clicking on the Excel files and clicking on “Open With” to no avail. It ignores me and will not bring up 2003. I’ve tried that with Excel 2003 open, closed, along with 2007 open and closed – no difference. I had no problem assigning Word 2003 to open my old Word documents, but Excel does not work the same way. Any suggestions?

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Why not start Excel 2003, and open the workbooks using File | Open?

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You asked the same question in post 655,174, and the problem appeared to be solved with the help of my reply in post 655,203. I assume that doesn’t work any more?

If so, try this:
– Select Start | Run…
– Type

"C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice11Excel.exe" /regserver

– Press Enter.

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Sorry for the confusion. Earlier that was one of the Student versions of Office. I now have the full-blown Office Pro version. The problem wasn’t actually fixed before, but I worked around it by uninstalling the Student version of Office 11. Now that I have the full version, I want to solve it completely. When I do as you suggested before (and now) Excel 2003 does try to open up the document, but for some reason it takes a different path in its quest (via an old and non existant hard drive) and I get error message upon error message saying it cannot find the document, but eventually it does correctly open it. Why on earth would merely restoring Excel 2003 as the default program to open .XLS documents change how it looks for those documents? This makes no sense to me. I did at one time have my documents saved on that now non-existant harddrive, but that was several months ago. I was hoping for a different solution, but apparently one may not exist. Thank you for your response.

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Check Tools | Options, General tab to see if the old, incorrect path is mentioned there.

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Thank you Hans for your responses. The Tools / Options / General path is correct as it is. I have always assumed that the T / O / G path is a one-way street from Excel to the files and that there is a different (hidden somewhere in the bowels) path from the files to Excel. Anyway, I’m just going to live with it the way it is as there does not seem to be a fix for it. Thank you again.

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Well, it has been mostly solved. Turns out that when you load Office 2007 on your computer while retaining Office 2003, one of the “shared” commands is different in 2007 than it was in 2003. I haven’t been able to figure out which command nor why, but here’s what happens. When you have only Office 2003 (or any other version I presume) on your computer and you double-click on an Excel file, it correctly reads the folder that you are currently in. If, however, you have both versions 2003 and 2007 installed, the later version’s method of identifying your current open folder is different than the earlier version’s. Excel 2007 apparently handles spaces in your folder’s name differently that 2003 does. The error messages I mentioned earlier were that it could not find the folder “My” and than “Documents” etc. on down the line. I edited my “My Documents” folder to remove the space such that it’s now “MyDocuments.” I then went into Excel and selected Tools / Options / General and edited the Default File Location path to remove the space in My Documents and now it works as advertised. Learn something new every day.

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That’s very strange – spaces in folder and file names have been allowed for more than 10 years now (starting with Windows 95), so programs should be able to handle them.
Try the following:
– Open Windows Explorer.
– Select Tools | Folder Options…
– Activate the File Types tab.
– Select the XLS extension in the list.
– Click Advanced.
– Select the Open action.
– Click Edit…
– Compare what you see to the screenshot below. The quotes around %1 are important – they allow you to use spaces in names.

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Hans –

There are no quote marks around the %1. Here’s what I have:

“H:Office 2003OFFICE11EXCEL.EXE” %1

Another interesting thing is that when I use Excel 2007 as my intended program, it doesn’t care about the spaces. Only when both are there, and I attempt to open a file with Excel 2003 by double clicking it , does this problem occur. My conclusion is that Excel 2007 altered a common command file that is used to open saved Excel files. Why? I have no idea.

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Put double quotes around the %1, that is what allows spaces in file names to work.

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As I tried to imply, and as Legare mentions implicitly, you must place double quotes around the %1:

"H:Office 2003OFFICE11EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

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Thanks guys. It’s getting a lot closer, but there is still a small problem. My latest “Application used to perform action” is: “H:Office 2003OFFICE11EXCEL.EXE” “%1” That does indeed open the selected file without the unrecognized file names error messages and with a space in the folder name. It, however, now brings up a different error message that incidentally is incorrect and that is: “SELECTED_FILE.XLS is already open. Reopening will cause any changes you made to be discarded. Do you want to reopen SELECTED_FILE.XLS?” YES / NO. Note that only one copy of my SELECTED_FILE.XLS file is actually open. That error I can live with because regardless of what I click, YES or NO, the error message goes away and things are back to normal. Oh well.

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Have you checked that the other settings in the dialog shown in post 662,803 are the same on your PC?

Also, select Tools | Options in Excel, activate the General tab and make sure that the check box labeled “Inogre other applications” is clear.

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Hans –

Sorry for not responding before this. Yes the rest of the words etc., in the diaglog box are identical. I did not have the “Ignore Other Applications” box checked. It is now. It seems to work now as it is suppose to. When I double-click an Excel file, it opens up Excel 2003 and then the selected document without any error messages. Thank you Hans for your patience and knowledge.

IrishLefty

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Hmm… usually, the “Ignore other applications” check box should be cleared, but if it works better for you when it’s checked, that’s fine with me.

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I just noticed something that could be causing this problem. I see in the dialog box that you posted earlier, that there is a “%1” on the Excel command line and again in the open parameter in the Use DDE section. As you can see in the same dialog box from my XL2K system, the “%1” parameter is only specified in parameter for the Open in the Use DDE section. If you have it in both placed, and have Use DDE checked, then I think Excel will try to open the file that you double click on twice, once because the file name is a parameter on the command line, and the second time because Explorer uses DDE to try to open the file. If you set the “Ignore other applications” option, then Excel will ignore the DDE open command and only open the file once. However, that can cause other unwanted problems like links to XL not updating automatically.

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Did you intend to post a screenshot?

My Excel XP at home also doesn’t have the “%1” in the command line, but adding it doesn’t make Excel open a workbook twice.

(BTW, after adding it, I couldn’t get rid of it using the Tools | Folder Options > File Types dialog, Windows kept adding %1, which as we know by now doesn’t work correctly. I had to run Excel.exe /regserver to restore the original situation)

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Yes, I forgot to add the screen shot. I have fixed it.

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