Not a guaranteed solution, but this sometimes helps (when it's the cause).
Click the "Office Button" then choose [Excel Options] down at the lower right
of the window that appears. Click the [Advanced] option and scroll down
almost to the bottom - find the {General} group. If the "Ignore other
applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)" box is checked, uncheck it.

"mellinghouse" wrote:

I recently installed Office 2007 and since I have been unable to open an
excel document by just selecting and "double clicking" on the excel document.
I have to first open excel 2007 and open the document in question thru the
excel program. It does not matter if the document in question was created in
excel 2003 or 2007. I have downloaded the compatiblity and my system is up
do date. I operate using XP Pro.
Any help or suggestions would be great.