Offic 97 Toolbar not working - file association ?

[GBall]

Hi,
I installed a piece of shareware (an editor) last week, which somehow associated itself with the office toolbar, so that every time I clicked on a button, the exe file (excel, word etc.) was opened with the editor instead of running.
They acknowledged the bug, but haven't supplied me with a method to get the toolbar functionality back.
I've uninstalled the software to no avail and I've tried uninstalling and re-installing Office 97.

Can someone tell me what I have to do to get the toolbar to work properly ?
Every time I click on a button now, it tells me that it cannot find program.exe, which is needed to open files of type ''.

TIA. Regards,
Graham

 

[donna6197]

The following instructions are for NT4 and Office97

Right click on the Office Bar and choose Customize.
Click on the buttons tab.

Remove the buttons that do not work.
Choose Add File and navigate to the .exe file for the application to add a button.

Note - If you are going to rename the buttons that you've just added, make sure you close the customize dialog box and then go back in to rename as the order of the buttons sometimes gets a bit messed up and you end up renaming the wrong button.

 

[GBall]

Thanks, but I get the same result. Regards,
Graham

 

[tsuji]

Hello, GBall.

I've read several times your original message. It's sort of funny how little I understand what you try to convey. I guess others may have the same difficulty. Could you clarify?

"so that every time I clicked on a button, the exe file (excel, word etc.) was opened with the editor instead of running." --- what button? of where? the exe file, what exe file? do you mean .doc, .xls, ... or actually you mean winword.exe, excel.exe,...?

Then below, "the toolbar". Toolbar under what software?
Then again "the button". What button? where is it located?

regards - tsuji

 

[johncurtis]

Try re-registering office.
From a command prompt run:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe" /unregserver
then
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe" /regserver
(assuming default installation directory)

If this works with Word, do the same with the other Office programs you're running.

hth
John

 

[GBall]

John, thanks, but no good.

Tsuji, read the title of the post, then I think it should answer all your questions. It's also known as the shortcut toolbar.
Regards,
Graham

 

[GBall]

Thanks for all input, it came down to a registry hack in the end.
Regards,
Graham

 

[tsuji]

GBall,

So, I guess the problem is not derived from anything wrong with the shortcut bar, but is a pure file-association problem.

[1] From Start|Folder Options, locate the Microsoft Excel Worksheet under File types tab and registered file type window. Highlight it, and click on the Edit.
[2] From the Actions list, highlight the Open and click on the edit button below.
[3] From the action command line, see if it is pointing to the now removed shareware? or it is still something like :
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe" /e

[4.a] If the Open action is pointing to the removed shareware, then reedit the line to the above.
[4.b] If the Open action is still the above, then back track by OK's. Then from the Actions list, see if the Open is in bold letter (ie the default action). If not then reset the Open to default action. In this case, it is highly likely the shareware had added certain action in this list. You should then remove those actions.

The above is just an outline to ascertain the .xls problem. Other office files can be similarly reset to default. In fact, the settings are slightly more involved than the above, but it shows the essential and if done, would put you back to xls' editing action correctly. Then, you can reset the file associations one after the other.

- tsuji