Excel Can't double click to open files

I've been troubleshooting this issue for the past 2 days and I can't figure out what's causing this issue. 

If I try to double-click and open an excel file it will give the error "There was a problem sending the command to the program."

I have tried everything from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3001579. I was able to get it kinda working with a registry hack that basically disables DDE. It will open but still gives the error and the registry hack will be undone with a windows or office update. This just started happening this week for us. This particular machine wasn't showing this behavior then i installed about 16 windows updates. After those were installed, it stopped working and even after removing all those updates it still isn't working. 

I'm not sure what else to try at this point. 

August 21st, 2015 3:20pm

If this is just happening to Excel files, and nothing else, then...

I'd recommend that you just uninstall/reinstall office.

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August 22nd, 2015 11:05am

If this is just happening to Excel files, and nothing else, then...

I'd recommend that you just uninstall/reinstall office.

That was one of the first things I tried. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the issue. 
August 24th, 2015 10:23am

Did you just uninstall from the control panel? If so, I would recommend using the fixit uninstaller or doing in manually using the directions from the link below

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manually-uninstall-Office-2013-or-Office-365-1d1110d5-75a4-4154-969e-4260ff29b232?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

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August 24th, 2015 10:30am

I figured out the problem today. I narrowed it down to a 3rd party service that runs called Power Broker from BeyondTrust. This was working fine for a couple months but it must be conflicting with new Windows Updates or something. After disabling it through msconfig then I was able to launch excel documents like normal.

  • Proposed as answer by Grant Vernon 12 hours 40 minutes ago
August 24th, 2015 2:37pm

I figured out the problem today. I narrowed it down to a 3rd party service that runs called Power Broker from BeyondTrust. This was working fine for a couple months but it must be conflicting with new Windows Updates or something. After disabling it through msconfig then I was able to launch excel documents like normal.

  • Proposed as answer by Grant Vernon Monday, August 24, 2015 6:41 PM
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
August 24th, 2015 6:36pm

I figured out the problem today. I narrowed it down to a 3rd party service that runs called Power Broker from BeyondTrust. This was working fine for a couple months but it must be conflicting with new Windows Updates or something. After disabling it through msconfig then I was able to launch excel documents like normal.

  • Proposed as answer by Grant Vernon Monday, August 24, 2015 6:41 PM
August 24th, 2015 6:36pm

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