Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows
A family of Microsoft spreadsheet software with tools for analyzing, charting, and communicating data.
Same issue and this worked for me as well. Thank you.
Cannot open files from Windows Explorer
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Anonymous
In order to open up files in excel 2013 (csv, xlsx, or xls) i must open them directly from within Excel. If I double click a file from Windows Explorer, Excel opens up but does not open the file. No errors. Just a **** excel instance. It looks like I just opened up the application from my start screen.
Other Office 2013 applications work as expected. I.e, I can open up a docx from Windows Explorer just fine.
Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows
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.
50 answers
Sort by: Oldest
-
Anonymous
2015-04-10T20:17:59+00:00 -
Anonymous
2015-04-23T12:24:28+00:00 None of the Above answers worked for me, and I was stumped. I stopped blaming Microsoft and looked for other programs. I found my problem in the Dell Security software that was digitally downloaded *After* I installed Office. I uninstalled the Dell software and everything worked.
-
Anonymous
2015-05-07T23:03:12+00:00 You don't need to reinstall Office (unless you have that much time to do so). Try going to Excel Options > Advanced > General and see if "ignore other applications that use DDE" is checked.
If so, uncheck and see if that resolves the issue.
-
Anonymous
2015-05-07T23:03:47+00:00 You don't need to reinstall Office (unless you have that much time to do so). Try going to Excel Options > Advanced > General and see if "ignore other applications that use DDE" is checked.
If so, uncheck and see if that resolves the issue.
-
Anonymous
2015-05-13T11:25:31+00:00 Thanks. I checked and that option was not checked. For some of my EXCEL files I changed my shortcuts to look for Microsoft Open XLM Converter (instead of EXCEL) and clicking on those shortcuts will open the application and the file. The shortcuts that look for EXXEL will not work, nor will double clicking directly on a file. WORD files have the same problem. The issue started with an automatic update, which I verified by reinstalling (it worked fine after that until the update).