If you are seeing new workbooks (excel/windows is treating it like a template),
then try this:

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.


Thanks so much, I reset the registry to factory defaults and it all
works fine now. Before fixing the problem, I had noticed that any .xls
files opened...even in Windows Explorer were only a copy with a little
1 after the file name. Still not sure how someone rigged excel to do
that though... but again, tx for the tip!