Excel will not open file from Windows Explorer

When I try to open a Excel file from any directory using Windows Explorer, it won't open. I get the loading screen from Excel, but opening a blank file. The file can be created in Excel Office 365, saved on the C drive, or any network drive. It can only be opened from inside Excel. It can not be opened from Explorer.

System is Win 7/64, using VMware, Office 365

  • Edited by DHeler Sunday, January 04, 2015 2:50 PM
January 4th, 2015 5:48pm

Hi,

So you are not able to double-click to open a workbook from Windows Explorer directly, right? Does this only happen to Excel application?

This sounds like a problem with the file associations in Windows. I would suggest we try to reregister Excel.exe to force Excel to reconstruct all the proper association settings:

Press Win + R and type "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE /regserver" in the blank box, then press Enter.

(Please note that you might need to adjust the path to your Excel program according to your own installation.)

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ethan Hua
TechNet Community Support

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January 5th, 2015 11:02am

Ethan,

I attempted to perform your procedure. Here was the path I had to Excel:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\excel.exe /regserver"

The program, was that /regserver did not work....it did not recognized the command. To ensure I had the proper path, I removed the "/regserver" words, and execel did open up.

My problem is I can double "click" on an excel file, the program opens up, the contents of the file are blank in excel. The program opens, but the data is not shown in excel. I have to open the file within excel to see the contents.

I not sure why the "/regserver" did not work?

David

January 5th, 2015 4:50pm

Hello David,

Thank you for your feedback. Sorry that it takes me so long to get back to you, this thread was missed from my query somehow.

So how is it going? The "/regserver" command works for me, please note that there is a space between "excel.exe" and "/regserver". If this is the case, could you please try again and let me know the result?

Thanks for your understanding.

Regards,

Ethan Hua
TechNet Community Support

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
January 13th, 2015 5:56am

Ethan,

This is what I get. If I remove the /regserver, than excel opens up. Any idea?

Windows cannot find "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\excel.exe /regserver"

  • Edited by DHeler Monday, January 19, 2015 2:58 PM
January 19th, 2015 5:57pm

It's a switch which should works for all Office installation. If it doesn't work for your Office installation, then there might be some corruption with it, you might want repair your Office from control panel and see if it will fix the issue.

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
February 1st, 2015 8:56pm

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