New
#1
Unable to associate newly-installed Excel with .xls files
I've installed plenty of software, and changed the default associations governing what the software opens, and what file extensions are opened by it.
But I'm over a barrel dissociating old .xls files from Excel 2000, so a newer Excel opens them.
Background:
I actually ran the same Office 2000 on my computers from when I first got the software in 2000, to earlier this month. It got the job done, though with increasing issues, none of them show-stoppers.
But I discovered that I had other open seats on my volume-licensed Office 2016 from work, so figured I'd install that on my home computer.
Word behaves as wanted and expected. It opens the old .doc and the newer .docx files by default. No intervention needed from me.
For Excel though, it will open .xlsx files by default, but double-clicking on a .xls file will launch Excel 2000.
I have not been able to fix this with either the context menu "open with" option, or through the control panel.
If I go through the context menu - see below - the desired (new) Excel program does not appear in the recommended or "other" programs list. So I browse to the location of the .exe file using the browse option, double-click the icon, or single-click it and click "open" - and - nothing. It's like I didn't even do anything.
If I go through the control panel - see below - it's hard to see here, but the checkboxes for the file extensions are grayed out, and nothing changes if I click on a box, or click "select all."
There's also a "set associations" option in the control panel, but that works just like the context menu that I described above. Same thing if I right-click on a .xls file, pick "properties," then use the "open with" option to change the associated program.
There are two solutions I can think of, but neither appeals to me.
One is to uninstall Office 2000. It's illogical but I like the "crutch" of having it on my machine. And I've had other work computers where my Office 2000 coexisted fine with later (post-2007) versions of Office, and there weren't these file association problems.
The other is to edit things in the registry. Which I don't mind doing, but don't know what to edit here. And I'd think the normal Windows user interface should be able to do this.
Insight, please?