Why won't Excel 2013 work as an "Open With..." program in Windows 7?

Question

I just recently uninstalled Office 2010 32-bit and installed Office 2013 64-bit on my computer. I was sent some text files that are tab-delimited, so I want to open them with Excel.

I am trying to add Excel to the Open With... option in the right-click menu in Windows 7. Every time I try, I open the selection screen, browse to Excel.exe in the Office15 folder and press OK, but it refuses to stay as an option on the selection screen.

I know that I can open Excel and then open the file, or even drag-and-drop it onto Excel, but seeing as I'll be opening a lot of these files over the next few weeks, I'd really rather add it to the right-click menu (like I used to do all the time).

Any ideas as to why it won't allow me to open that way or how to fix it?

Solution 1

Finally figured it out. It was directly related to the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit. Poking around the registry I found the following key was wrong:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\EXCEL.EXE\shell\open\command\(Default)

Within this key was the following "old" value:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

When I changed it to the correct, new location for Excel, it started working immediately.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

Solution 2

you're right on the mark, but mileage may differ..

That is, the correct registry value in my case is:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

And yes, it started working right away. Awesome!

Solution 3

Press Win+R and type regedit. Then open this:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.txt\OpenWithList

and add new value in that place. there must be a, b, ... so you name your value c if you have a,b. Put this text "EXCEL.EXE" without quotes into a value data and see if this work.

Bee careful with registry things!

Comments

[Admin]

do you want to open that type of file with excel all the time?

[Admin]

so it worked before and stop working after installing Office 2013?

[Admin]

Can't say 100% that it used to work on this machine, but I know that I have the same basic setup at work (Win7x64, similar other installs) but still with Office 2010 and it does work there.

[Admin]

how did it go ?

[Admin]

try WINWORD.EXE see if it works.

[techturtle]

I figured there would be a place like this in the registry, but didn't know where to find it. Unfortunately, this won't work because I already had EXCEL.EXE in there (at position C) and it's still not in my right-click menu.

[Dilshod]

ok then try deleting it from there and add it again(do not add from registry).

[techturtle]

Got it working eventually. +1 because your solution should work for most people and for sticking with me trying to fix this. Thanks!

[teylyn]

Please don't post comments as answers. Your contribution is not an answer. If you want to post a comment, earn the 50 rep required. Until then, just hold that thought.

[djv]

This path was correct in my case as well. +1

[bwDraco]

Can you expand upon this? An explanation of this procedure would make this answer more useful.

[PowerUser]

While @teylyn is technically correct, your answer is also helpful. Thanks for clarifying techturtle's answer.

[Inarion]

Awesome. Utterly helpful. I observed that when I correct the path in HKEY_CURRENT_USER (due to missing admin privileges), the erroneous path in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT also changes. Not sure why Windows is even allowing that...