There was a problem sending the command to the program

[altjx]

Can someone please help me with this stupid issue? Every time I try to open a Microsoft Word file or Excel file, a popup comes up displaying the "There was a problem sending the command to the program." message. I've done my research online but people's solutions didn't work for me.

Here is a list of things I've tried so far:

1. Deleted the "Data" registry key from the correct registry path.
2. Ran the "winword.exe /r" command from command prompt
3. Repaired Microsoft Office using the installation CD.
4. Ran the Microsoft Diagnostics (which didn't find any issues).
5. Reassociated the extensions in Control Panel > Default Programs.
6. Ensured that the "Run as administrator" checkbox isn't ticked in winword.exe's properties.

None of these work. Please advise.

Thanks,

 

[braddersz]

Hey,

What version of office is this ?.

 

[altjx]

Hey Braddersz,

I am using Office 2007. I was, however, able to get the problem fixed by reinstalling Office for a second time in a row... Not sure exactly how that worked but glad to get it working. Thanks for the help!

 

[braddersz]

Its a strange issue that Microsoft are yet to fix. I've had this error numerous of times,
With many different issues causing it,

Sometimes, changing the default printer can resolve it. How? And why. I have no idea.

Office gets its security settings from ie, so in some cases a ie reset can resolve it too ,

In the past, I've manually cleared the office temp folder. And that's resolved it

Having open office installed can cause this too, along with power poi t viewer.

How strange.

 

[altjx]

Its a strange issue that Microsoft are yet to fix. I've had this error numerous of times,
With many different issues causing it,

Sometimes, changing the default printer can resolve it. How? And why. I have no idea.

Office gets its security settings from ie, so in some cases a ie reset can resolve it too ,

In the past, I've manually cleared the office temp folder. And that's resolved it

Having open office installed can cause this too, along with power poi t viewer.

How strange.

Yeah, and it's VERY annoying man. I've also had this same issue yesterday, but I was able to get it resolved yesterday by going to the control panel and re-assigning the default program for doc files.

Seems like everyone's solutions never work for me. I'm hoping it doesn't start back up tomorrow once I reboot the system again.

 

[altjx]

I'm back here again. I've rebooted my system and the problem has come back. This is the second time the problem has come back after rebooting. I am now convinced that it might be fixed while reinstalling Office, but it comes back again the minute I reboot.

 

[davidtaylor3915]

C Every time I try to open a Microsoft Word file or Excel file, a popup comes up displaying the "There was a problem sending the command to the program." message. I've done my research online but people's solutions didn't work for me.

A fix for "There was a problem sending the command to the program." in Word 2013 is at
Fix for There was a problem sending the command to the program
I am confident that a similar fix will work for other Office apps and for earlier versions of Office apps

 

[KrysK]

New solution

"There was a problem sending the command to the program" has appeared on my Windows 7 machine in the first week of September, 2013. I tried to repair MS Office 2003 from within the Program and Features, but repair and re-installation have failed due to "unspecified error". Windows application logs showed that the repair has failed due to "protected keys" in the Registry. Windows Installer was blocked from writing to MS Office keys. My antivirus and firewall were turned off. On the Uninstall or Change programs list I noticed September 6, 2013 entry "Microsoft Office 2003 Interoperative Assembly" from Microsoft. I didn't install this, so I uninstalled that item. Afterwards, both Excel and Word no longer showed an error, and files are opening normally.

KrysK

 

[bill77056]

My There was a problem sending the command to the program solved by:

1) Word/OneNote -- right click on an unopened Word document (.docx), select Open With and changed the default program to Microsoft Word. The setting was Microsoft Word Viewer.


2) Excel – Options à Advanced à General. Scroll to near the bottom and make sure Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is unchecked.

 

[KrysK]

Thank you. I did see both solutions earlier and tried, didn't work. The /unregserver and /regserver gave no results either. It is very likely that my problem was different, but showed the same symptoms, and the same warning tag.

 

[DSammy]

Easy solution - thank you!

Following the lead of another poster, I did the following:

For Word/OneNote -- right click on an unopened Word document (.docx), select Open With and change the default program to Microsoft Word. The setting was set for Microsoft Word Viewer.

For an Excel document, I did the same but, after right clicking and choosing 'open with', I had to actually go into 'browse' and search for the Excel.exe as it didn't show up in their lists - even though about 10 other options did (very weird).

Super easy and now everything seems to be working fine! So relieved!

 

[doppelganger]

Thank you, DSammy! This fixed the issue for me, while the Microsoft FixIt solution did not.