Open Excel File by Double Click

Recently I had experience a problem at work. I cannot open Excel files by double click them. I tried to open from Excel Open menu and it works fine. I have no problems to open other files such as word or txt files.

I checked my other colleagues and they don't have the issue. One of my friend recommended me to find solution from web by googling. Soon I found a solution. This is something related to Excel registry settings. Since the complexity of Windows registry, it is not recommended to directly edit or change settings there. I found that there is file association from File Explorer. Here is what I did.

First, open File Type from Tools menu, locate the XLS (notice the upper case):



Click Advanced button, the following dialog is displayed.



Select Open in Action list. Click on Edit button:



Make sure to clear Use DDE, then click OK. Apply changes. This will be double click on Excel default behavior back.

Reference

• Microsoft Knowledge Base: You cannot double-cock to open an Excel...