Excel doing weird things

corblimey

I've had Excel 2010 installed on my PC for the last few months since I bought it. I have it added it to my taskbar. However, this week, every time I clicked on the pinned shortcut, it would go into some sort of configuration installer dialog which just sat there, no matter what I did. I also get this dialog if I dbl click on an .xls file. The only way I can currently start up Excel is by double clicking on the exe file in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12 folder.

I have no idea what could be causing this. Google makes mention of admin accounts, and registry settings (none of which match what I have in my registry). It's not a disaster, but it's pretty inconvenient.

PS: just checked, and WinWord does the same thing when I click on .docx files.

Tropheus

I presume it's a legal version of Office. Have you tried reinstalling? Can't say I've experienced this problem.

corblimey

Yeah, totally legit, and reinstalling is probably the next step, although since it works from the Office12 folder, there's nothing inherently wrong with the software, so I can't see what a reinstall would do. It's more to do with how Windows interprets shortcuts to the exe or something.

5uspect

A friend of mine had their Office15 install **** itself this week. All the various program executables just vanished. They ended up having to reinstall it.

Could a Windows update have caused something unexpected?

yoyo

My Dads Office 2013 screwed up recently. I had to uninstall and re-install it. something similar to what you describe. Try completely uninstalling and re-installing. Run this FixIT also to make sure it's completely removed before reinstalling .

Nick