Three thoughts:

1) It's a way for MSFT to run its Windows validation tool (but probably not)

2) Excel has a number of web services (stock quotes, etc.) which you may
have installed

3) Excel's help files often need to extract information from microsoft.com

Dave

--
A hint to posters: Specific, detailed questions are more likely to be
answered than questions that provide no detail about your problem.


"V J" wrote:

Why does Excel access the internet when it starts up? I blocked it in my
firewall and it works fine until I attempt to use the Excel import in
Quickbooks. I couldn't get the import to work until I unblocked Excel in my
firewall. I don't do anything in Excel that requires internet access so I'm
at a loss as to what it's doing.

V J