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I've seen this same problem frequently on other message boards and there has never been a solution, so I'm hoping that Microsoft is aware of it (they should be) and can address it definitively.
I have a Word 2007 document with an embedded Excel 2007 spreadsheet. When I attempt to open the spreadsheet I get the message: "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.". Excel is in fact installed. If I have Excel closed when I attempt to open the embedded spreadsheet then Excel actually opens, but then it does not open the embedded workbook and Word immediately gives the above message after Excel opens.
This is the same problem as is addressed in KB article 960806, except that I do not have "SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007" installed
I have run MS Office Diagnostics and no errors were reported.
I have "Repaired" the installation from add/remove programs. After I did this the embedded workbook appeared as a picture in the document and I couldn't even attempt to open it.
I have tried deselecting "ignore DDE" in Excel Options > Advanced > General
I have tried converting the embedding object to a binary object and back again.
The embedded workbook is a macro-enabled workbook, I don't know if it also happens for non-macro-enabled workbooks.
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Had the same issue; disabling Goodle Cloud Connect add-in in both Word and Excel solved it for me. It might help to try disabling all the installed add-ins.
All I can say regaring "does anyone have any experience with this (i.e. Word 2010) is that i have a doc with the issue in 2007 but the issue does not occur with 2010. It's on a different computer as well though.
It occurs just the same in 2010 I can assure you. I've even tried recreating a doc in 2010 and embedding blank excel objects and have the same issue on multiple machines.
The ONLY workaround for this that I'm aware of is to make sure you close out each and every 'popped' excel window prior to opening another embedded object.
All I can say regaring "does anyone have any experience with this (i.e. Word 2010) is that i have a doc with the issue in 2007 but the issue does not occur with 2010. It's on a different computer as well though.
After reading all the suggestions, And I have tested many of them. I enden up with using the original Word 2003 templates. And use them in Compatibillity Mode in Word 2007. And wait for a final sulution from Microsoft. The big question is how it would behavour in Word 2010. Does anybody have any experience with this?
I have found a work around. I had a copy of the sheet so deleted the errored embeded excel and instead of inserting it as an object dragged and dropped the excel sheet in the word document. Converted to excel icon and activated it as excel sheet and it works.
The drag and dropped excel workbooks work but if I insert the excel workbook as an object it only works till the word document is not closed. The moment it is closed and opened inserted object doesnt work and shows as unknown object.
Copying and pasting the unknown object in outlook doesn't change the behaviour of the excel sheet.