Make the shortcuts point to the actual files, not the directory.

--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP - Excel, 10 Years
Pearson Software Consulting
www.cpearson.com
(email on the web site)

"Darren Hill" wrote in message
...
By the way, I'm having trouble setting up this scheme.
I have a "C:\DarrensSettings" folder where I keep common files &
locations.
I've created the following folders:
"C:\DarrensSettings\XLStart"
"C:\DarrensSettings\XLStart\XL2007"
"C:\DarrensSettings\XLStart\XL2000"
"C:\DarrensSettings\XLStart\XLCommon"
I've set up the xl2007 & xl2000 folders as startup locations, and put
shortcuts in them that point to the XLCommon folder.

Now whenever I start up either Excel I get a message that the XLCommon
folder can't be accessed as it's read-only.
When I try to change this setting on the folders in windows explorer, it
seems Windows keeps changing them back to Read Only.
I'm using WinXP SP2.

And now that I check, every single folder that I've checked so far,
whether in my documents or elsewhere is like this. Very worrying.

Darren Hill wrote:
That's a great approach.
Does your XLStartAllVersions.xls replace the personal.xls file, or do you
use a personal.xls file as well?

Chip Pearson wrote:
What I do is create an XLStart folder for each version of Excel I use.
E.g., I have folders C:\XLStart2002, C:\XLStart2003 and C:\XLStart2007.
Each of these contains version-specific files to be opened at startup.
Each of those folders also contains a Windows shortcut to
C:\XLStart\XLStartAllVersions.xls. The XLStartAllVersions.xls file has
the code that is shared between all versions of Excel. Then I set the
"open at startup" setting for each version of Excel to that versions
XLStart folder. When Excel starts, it opens the version-specific files
and then via the shortcut opens the common, all versions, file(s).