I am having trouble with a word document that has an embedded excel spreadsheet in it.  If you double click on the spreadsheet to edit it, the following error message appears:

"The program used to create this object is Excel.  That program is not installed on your computer.  To edit this object, you must install a program that can open the object."

I know that Excel is installed on the PC.  The PC is running Windows XP SP3 x86 and Office Professional Plus 2007.  I have tried editing the spreadsheet on a PC running Windows 7 Pro x64 with the same version of office and it works just fine.  I cannot find any differences in the setting between the two so I do not know why it works one place but not the other.

Any ideas?

If you double click on an Excel file in Windows Explorer, does Excel startup?  If not, right click on such a File and used the Open with item to set Excel as the default program for opening such files.

If you need to do that, it may also overcome the issue with the embedded work

Hi Flyguy,

Try going to the Windows Start|Run dialogue box and inputting:
Excel /regserver

This will cause Excel to re-register itself and re-write all its registry keys.

Hi

Thank you for share knowledge or provide useful resource.

We appreciate for your effort.

Cheers

William Zhou CHN

Hi Flyguy,

Try going to the Windows Start|Run dialogue box and inputting:
Excel /regserver

This will cause Excel to re-register itself and re-write all its registry

Hi Flyguy,

What Addins do you have running?

Is it an stand-alone embedded object, or a linked one?

Have you tried repairing your Office installation?

See also: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960806

I've had same kind of problem. After reinstalling Excel everything started to work fine.

If the document works fine for someone else when they log onto your PC and open the document, it may be an issue related to your user profile.
Conversely, if the document works fine for you when you when you log onto another PC and open it there, it's most likely something specific to your PC.
But if others have the same problem on your PC and you have the same problem on theirs' it may be that the document is corrupt.

I still have the problem after all of those ideas macropod.

Just to clarify all standard troubleshooting methods have been completed and the problem remains. The file is not corrupt. I created an entirely new file and the problem is still there. I opened multiple other documents and the problem still remained. It's also not a profile issue, I have deleted the profile and had it recreated, and the problem still remains. As far as I can tell it seems to possibly be related to an update that was pushed out by WSUS. But that is not for sure. The only thing that fixes the issue is to do a complete system rebuild. After the rebuild there are several office related security patches and updates that come down from WSUS. If I can have any additional ideas that would be great. It's almost like the embedded excel thinks it's a picture. Every time I go to select it the format picture tab opens up on the ribbon menu.

Thanks for any additional ideas.

• Proposed as answer by WHITCHY 9 hours 45 minutes ago

Delete the Excel instance running in the background. Go to your task manager and delete it. After this, open your Word document and edit your embedded Excel.

After trying all other listed suggestions with no luck, this resolved the issue for me.

Thanks heaps!