Files opening with different file names

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vladikavkaz
  • Start date Start date
V

Vladikavkaz

Good afternoon/morning.

Having a strange issue with Excel at present.

If a file is sitting on my desktop, called invoices.xls, I click on it to
open, and it opens as invoices1
The same happens if I 'explore' to the file.

However, if I open excel and then click 'file''open' then click on the file,
it opens as invoices.xls.

When trying to save invoices1 it will save as invoices1.xls, then if I open
this it will open it as invoices11

I'm running Windows 2000 with Excel 2000.

Any help/guesswork would be appreciated!
 
It sounds like the default behavior when you double click on a .xls file is set
to NEW, not OPEN.

Try a test to verify:

Right click on the file when you're on the desktop.

You should get a popup with a bunch of options. I get Open and New right at the
top of the list. Open is bolded which means that Open is the default action
when you double click on the file.

If your default action is NEW, then windows will tell excel to open it like a
template. That's why you'd get the invoices1 (with no extension).

If your situation matches, this is what I'd do next (the easiest, I think).

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.

Now you could check by rightclicking again. If it looks good, try double
clicking and see if it really worked!


==========
Option 2. (A little more work.)

I use windows98, so depending on your version of windows, it might not be quite
the same--but it'll be pretty close.

Close excel
open Windows explorer (flying windows-E is a quick way)
View|Folder Options|File Types
Scroll down to Microsoft Excel Worksheet and select that
Click the Edit button
You'll see a list of Actions in a little box.
Open should be the bold one (here, too!)

If it's not, then click on Open and then click the "make default" button.

(Ok your way out.)


Now try rightclicking and then try double clicking to see if it got fixed.
 
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