Recently whenever I try to retrieve an Excel file by clicking on the filename in "My Recent Documents," Excel tries to load files with names based on part of the pathname. For example if the path is "Documents and Settings/Bob/My Documents," Excel with try to load files named "Documents.xls," "My.xls," etc. If I click "OK" all the way through, it eventually opens the requested file. ONLY HAPPENS WITH EXCEL, not WORD or any other Office XP program. I have cleaned out "My Recent Documents," disabled and then re-enabled it, run Repair on Excel, and looked for oddities in the registry (didn't really notice anything odd). Any suggestions?? Thanks.

Try going to Settings, Folder Options, (not sure where it is on XP), File types, double click on Microsoft Excel Worksheet to open it's properties box. Double click on Open in the Action window to open it's properties box. Check next to Use DDE and in the DDE message window use "[open("%1")]" without the quotation marks. Ok your way out. The %1 should make it look past the spaces in the file name. In your case the Path's name begining with the word Documents. HTH (no guarentee) Bryan

It was set up the way you suggested. However, I looking at the "Application Used..." line I noticed that the path to the program was also followed by a '%1' NOT in quotes, while on another computer I looked at the "%1" WAS in quotes. So I put ""'s around the '%1' on that line and now it seems to work fine. Wonder what changed it???? Anyway, thanks for your suggestion which led to the solution.

You are welcome. Bryan

About the quotes thing.... I believe the "Application Used..." line tells Windows how to open the file as a command line, where %1 means the path and filename to the opening file. A space means that the path is over, unless when you're using quotes to determine the beginning and ending. So, when the path/filename has spaces, you need to use quotes. In your case, if you were to open a file named "I am the walrus.txt", with < excel.exe "%1" > you'd be actually doing < excel.exe "I am the walrus.txt" > and Excel would open the file "I am the walrus.txt", but with < excel.exe "%1" >, you'd be doing < excel.exe I am the walrus.txt > and Excel would try to open several files named "I", "am", "the" and "walrus.txt"... Anyway, to tell the truth, I just figured that all out. Thanks for making me find out what that bloody %1 meant. Now to find how to make Paint Shop Pro 7 open double-clicked files in the same window...