Excel Crashes When Opening Files.

[vacunita]

This one is a weird one. I've had a few cases through the years in different OSes and I have yet to find a way to correct this without actually having to re-install the OS and Office.

It seems at some point something goes wrong, and any of the Office applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) will no longer open files that have been double clicked from explorer or single clicked from places like the Recent Documents list in the Start Menu.

This time its excel, but the behavior is the same with all Office applications when its happened. They Double click or click on a file the application opens and immediately issues an error and that it needs to close. Once closed it opens again by itself, and at that point the files can either be dragged in or Opened from the file menu and they open fine.

Also if Excel is opened by clicking on the shortcut it will open fine. Try to double click a file with excel opened and it crashes with the same error.

As I said I've seen this issue many times and nothing short of re-installing fixes it.

Any idea what causes it, and how to fix it? I've been searching Microsoft's knowledge base and google but have come up empty. By the way, Repairing the Office installation from Control Panel does nothing to the problem.

Office installation is Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[NESWalt]

Not as much a solution, as confirmation that I've seen the issue as well (or at least a similar one)

In my case all of the files were saved on a network share. Local files worked fine, but if a user tried to double-click or Right Mouse Button -> Open a file from the network share, it bombed. It would also be true if they right mouse clicked a file in the File Open Dialog Box of Excel/Word instead of clicking the Open Button.

We tried the reinstall of the OS/Office, but after a while, the issue came back. In addition, load times could go into 30+ seconds for a small 50K file. Turned out in this case it was a NIC issue and we had to eventually replace the mobo on the computer (the NIC was integrated).

 

[NESWalt]

by the way, I meant on ONLY this one particular computer - everyone else's worked fine.

 

[xlhelp]

Which version?

If not 2007, then find all XLB files and rename or delete them. You will lose any Toolbar customization.

If 2007 rename or delete QAT files.

Vita Brevis

 

[vacunita]

Office installation is Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

Anyway, I'll look into the XLB files and delete them see if that helps.



The files in question are local to the Office installation so that should not be an issue.
Still its good to know if I ever get the symptoms over the network.


----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[vacunita]

Well I searched for XLB files and none where found anywhere. Where exactly would they be located?





----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[vacunita]

Well still no advancement in solving this problem.

Anybody have any ideas as to what it could be?

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[GlennUK]

Well I searched for XLB files and none where found anywhere. Where exactly would they be located?

How did you search? Did you include system folders?

Cheers, Glenn.

Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.

 

[vacunita]

I used Windows Search. *.XLB but forgot to check the option for hidden files and folders.

Anyway it found 1 file in Documents and Settings/Administrator/Application Data/Microsoft/Excel/

I changed the extension to .OLD, but still Excel crashes.

Any other ideas?

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[xlhelp]

Is it just one system?

Have you logged in as admin or another user and does XL still crash?

If it's happening for one user only, then rename their profile, shut down, power on, and get the user to login and see if crashes stop.


Vita Brevis

 

[vacunita]

Yes I am logged in as Administrator. Its the only local account on the machine. If I log in as any other domain user that can log in to this machine it still does the same thing.

I actually logged in as a user that has never logged in to the machine and after it set the new office settings for the user it still crashes. So its not a user problem its a system wide effect.

Repairing the Office installation does nothing.

However I do have some new developments.

I went into Tools->Folder Options -> File Types to take a look at the .xls file associations. As usual the application has the /e switch to prevent the showing of the splash screen. I replaced it with the /s switch to make Excel start in safe mode and added " (quotes) round the %1 parameter. It does open the file but then it immediately crashes.
It does return a more explicit error though. It said "Excel cannot find the path specified" and shows the full path and file name to the file that was clicked.

Then the Explorer window from where you double clicked the file issues another error.

"There was a problem sending the command to the program"

Curiously the title of the box that has this error is the full path and file name of the clicked file.

I'm more confused now than before.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[xlhelp]

If you have Zone Alarm firewall installed, look up some of the problems associated with that.

Vita Brevis

 

[vacunita]

No I don't have zone alarm. I do have Widows firewall which for the duration of the tests has been turned off.

The Machine also has Mcafee Virus Scan as do all the other machines without this problem.

I'm starting to lean towards some DDE problme.

So I unchecked the "Use DDE" Option in the Actions box for XLS files and it seems to be working now.

Although If I try to open a file from the root of any drive (there are 2 drives with 2 partitions each) Excel immediately closes. But opening it from anywhere else so far seems to be working.

Still not closing the issue, so I'm all ears for any other ideas as to what it could be.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.