Try

ToolsOptionsGeneral uncheck "Ignore other Applications"
Exit Excel and try again

If this doesn't work try to re-register Excel

Close Excel first and
On the Windows Taskbar

1 ) StartRun "excel.exe /unregserver"(no quotes)OK.
2) StartRun "excel.exe /regserver"(no quotes)OK.
See the space between exe and /regserver

You might have to designate a full path to excel.exe.
In that case StartRun "C:\yourpath\excel.exe /regserver"(no quotes)OK.



--
Regards Ron de Bruin
http://www.rondebruin.nl


"MillMaster" wrote in message ...
The setup that causes this weird problem is as follows.
Im running Excel 2002 (office 2003), on a windows xp box.
I have created a shortcut to my excel files on a network drive.
When I doubleclick the shortcut directly it opens excel, but the spreadsheet
area is just a ghost of my desktop image. The file will not open this way,
and just stalls excel.

If I open excel first I can open the file just fine. But I have also noticed
that Excel is having a problem reading changes off the shortcuted file. If I
open the file it wont re-save on the network drive, it wants to save to my
desktop, and it also will not prompt me if somone else has made changes to
the file.

Anyone had an issue like this? This is only with excel, my word, and PP
shortcuts all work fine.