Double click Excel file may not work

I'm using Windows 7 and Office 2007 and Excel is having this issue. When I double click a particular Excel spreadsheet I get the following error:

Excel cannot access 'FILE.xls'. The document may be read-only or encrypted.

I click OK. Then :

'FILE.xls' cannot be accessed. The file may be corrupted, located on a server that is not responding, or is read-only.

I click OK

This does not happen in all cases. Some Excel files can be opened with a double click. Some files work OK. With this file,if I open Excel first then select the file using file->open the file loads fine. I have checked the file association, it's fine. I've checked the file attributes, it's not flagged read-only.

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

Make a copy of the problematic file and keep it in a safe place.

Open Excel and then open the problematic file using File > Open
Save the file as an XLSX file.
Close Excel

Open Excel and then open that XLSX file using File > Open
Save the file as an "Excel 97-2003 Workbook" XLS file.
Close Excel

Test opening the XLS version just saved via double click.

When I attempt this it tells me it will remove the VBA code from the file. I do want to retain the VBA code but tried your suggestion anyway. It still brings up the same errors.

Is this file on a server? If so, what happens if you copy it to your desktop?

It's not a network file. It's in a directory on my C: drive under My Documents

Interesting though it does work on my desktop, but not from the My Documents directory. So I would assume it's something with that directory or inherited rights?

Googling one of the errors that you mentioned showed a few returns pointing to this being a permissions issue - specifically a file ownership thing. You can try taking ownership if you wish.

I took ownership of the file, but still get the same errors. I am logging into a network profile, if that makes any difference.

Do you have another computer that you can test this on?
Can you make these errors happen with a file that can be uploaded to the forum?

Yep, tried the file on another computer and it worked fine.