help! Excel 2003 opens every doc on machine!

  • Thread starter Thread starter anon
  • Start date Start date
A

anon

as soon as I start it, it starts opening every single file (even non-Excel
files) & recursing directories. I have to kill it in the taskMgr or it will
crash the machine. I can only start Excel in safe mode (with /s). How do I
stop this? I have no idea how it started.

the machine has current corporate AV/anti-malware.

thanks
 
let me add when starting in. safe mode, i get this: "Excel has detected that
you have recovered files. These files will be opened the next time you
starft Excel in normal mode."
 
Try this first

Tools>Options
On the General tab you see "at startup, open all files in"
Be sure that this box is empty
 
On the General tab you see "at startup, open all files in"
Be sure that this box is empty
Click to expand...


thanks, it already is.

the files it tries opening are on a network drive, I:, that has hundreds of
thousands of documents strewn throughout thousands of directories. So I've
been thru all the settings looking for references to that by drive letter or
UNC path & haven't found any.

the default dir is the user home directory, not I:.
i've also checked 'disable AutoRecover' on the edit tab, but no difference.
 
If you can only open excel in safe mode, then this option will be turned off and
nothing will appear in that textbox.

Saved from a previous post:

If you know the name of the folder, you can (temporarily) rename that folder to
something else.

Then open excel and clean up that entry.

Then rename that folder back to what it should be.

If you don't know the name, you can make a change to the registry:

If you're comfortable changing the registry...

Windows start button|Run|Regedit

Traverse to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Options
under: AltStartup

And delete that key.

(11.0 means xl2003, 10.0 means xl2002, etc)

But be careful. Since you're working in the registry, you may want to back
it up before you do any changes. (You don't get a confirmation prompt when
you make changes here!)
 
Hi,

I haven't tried this but you might open it in safe mode and enter a C: drive
location and the exit. I'm just not sure if Excel retain this setting while
in safe mode.
 
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