Here are a couple of links that describe how to find start up errors:

Chip Pearson has some notes on how to diagnose startup errors at:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

And Jan Karel Pieterse has more notes at:
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/StartupProblems.asp

Sandy wrote:

Thanks for your responses. Unfortunately, I removed everything in the Tools,
Options, General, Startup files.... It still doesn't take care of the
problem. At startup, the user still gets the popup message, "Cost.doc is in
the wrong format". If I use the CTRL key to start in Safe mode, it works
fine. I can't figure out what it's looking for and how to stop it from
trying to open that file.

Thanks again for your suggestions....

"Sandy" wrote:

I'm helping a user in my office with this problem. When she starts Excel, a
message popups up that says, "filename.doc" is in the wrong format. She's
not sure what she did that might generate such an error.

I've checked all the settings and I can't tell where Excel is looking for
the forementioned file. Does anyone out there have a clue where I might look
to try to fix this error.

Thanks,

Sandy

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Dave Peterson