Excel Links Opening as Book1
 

Hello,

Our company is currently experiencing inconsistencies in how Excel documents
are opening when hyperlinked, hotlinked, or opened through the IE address
bar. For some individuals, they are able to enter a path to an Excel file
(on the C drive or on a shared drive) and it opens the actual file. Others
perform the same action and a copy of the file opens. An example is shown
below.

Action:
1) Open IE and type the following in the address bar: S:\BSC\IT Service
Desk\DS\Software.xls

2) Hit Enter and you are prompted to Open or Save. Click open.

Different Results:
1) On working machines the file opens up the actual file


2) On other machines the file opens as a copy of the file labeled Book1:


Why this is an issue:
This is causing end users to make modifications to a copy of the file
instead of the intended file. They do not find out what they have done until
they try to save the changes they have made.

Our environment:
I am unable to find a setting or common theme on these computers. It is
happening on IE 6 and IE 7 machines. It is happening on Office 2003 SP1 and
Office 2003 SP3 machines. We have approximately 2,500 machines in our
environment and this is happening to many of them but not all.

Notes:
The problem seems to be machine specific and not user specific. I have
verified that there are no files (hidden or not) in the following locations:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\XLSTART
C:\Documents and Settings\(userID)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART


The XLS file association Application used to perfrom action is set to:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" /e %1

Also, I have tried to run c:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\excel.exe /unregserver and then c:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\excel.exe /regserver.



Please let me know any other information you need. Thanks!