Bug in Windows Explorer: Doubleclick doesn't work

Trying to open an Excel sheet with a doubleclick in Windows Explorer I always get the following message: An error occurred in sending the command to the application. Error Number: 1156 (0x484). Error Code: ERROR_DDE_FAIL.
The files are ok, I can open them from Excel. The file association with Excel is ok too. SFC doesn't find any corrupted files, reinstallation of MS Office 2003 doesn't solve the problem.
It seems to be a Win7 bug because it occurs on several computers with Win7 Ultimate 32bit (final). I didn't have the problem in Vista and on Win7 Beta and RC. Disabling the Windows firewall and anti-virus-software provides no help. Other filetypes (doc, jpg, txt) aren't affected.

Many thanks for any assistance and kind regards
Taurus

It's not a bug. Make sure you haven't configured Excel to "ignore DDE requests". The setting is somewhere in Excel options.

DDE is an ancient mechanism but it's still used as a message-passing conduit by some of the Office apps. They register file-specific handlers which make the act of double-clicking one of those files (in Explorer) send a DDE message to the app to tell it that somebody just double-clicked the file.

In your case, the error message is effectively saying "I sent the DDE message but it seems nobody was listening at the Excel end". Hence, make sure you haven't configured Excel to ignore DDE. Look up the setting in Excel help if necessary.

Thanks for your assistance. But in Excel and the whole Office package I can't find any option to influence the DDE settings.

I have 3 computers with Win7 Ultimate 32bit final and Office 2003. The problem occurs on two of them. So I have imported the DDE registry settings from the laptop, which works fine, to one of the affected notebooks and restarted Windows. Now I get the message "Wrong parameter" when I try to open an Excel file from Windows Explorer.

Problem solved: Excel | Options | General - I've deactivated the setting "Ignore other applications". Many thanks for the tip about the Excel-Options.

taurus7050 said:

Problem solved: Excel | Options | General - I've deactivated the setting "Ignore other applications". Many thanks for the tip about the Excel-Options.

Glad to hear it's all working now :)