Excel Attachment in outlook will not open 1

[knarf]

I have a user that everytime he gets an e-mail with an excel spreadsheet as an attachment, he cannot open it. It brings up Excel, all the tool bars and menu options, but no spreadsheet. Only a grey screen. If he clicks on save as before looking at it, it comes up fine. Happens with excel attachments from anyone. Any ideas??

 

[scully99]

I've seen this several times myself and it can happen with any of the office products. The easiest and surest way to fix this is to uninstall Excel and the reinstall Excel (and of course then reapply any SRs and patches). This appears to happen because the call from outlook to the program has become courpt.

 

[DerekT]

The only problems I've had with opening attachments is when the 'Open' key for the associated app. is wrong (e.g. pointing to an old location of Excel, missing quotes so it gets confused by spaces in filenames, etc.)<br>
<br>
I've got a regini file that I use to fix any problems that I find, but you can check yours by going to:<br>
<br>
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\Shell\Open\Command<br>
<br>
(The "8" means Office 97, I assume that's what you're using)<br>
<br>
This key should be set to the location of excel.exe.<br>
<br>
e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE"<br>
<br>
And the key:<br>
<br>
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\Shell\Open\ddeexec<br>
<br>
Should be set to: [open("%1")]<br>
<br>
<br>
No promises, but it works for me!