I have a user who is experiencing an issue with excel 2003 and excel 2010. The user needs to have both of these programs.
The user uses .xls files daily and has multiple .xls files open all day that she modifies all day long. Throughout the day, she will receive .xlsx files from other users and when she tries to open them, she gets nothing but jibberish. IF she closes all her
.xls files and then goes and opens the .xlsx file, it opens just fine in excel 2010.
In short, She cannot open an .xlsx file while she already has an .xls file open.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled office several times. When installing, I install in this order. Office 2003, compatibility pack, excel 2010, REPAIR office 2003. The reason I repair office 2003 is because that's the only way that I know of to get .xls
files to default to opening in excel 2003 and not excel 2010.
I've also tried installing excel 2010 in a folder that's separate from office 2003. That doesn't work either.
Other users do not experience this issue and are able to open the .xlsx file while having a .xls file open already. She has the compatibility pack and she has the same software as all the other users. The only difference is that she has a Lenovo T430 while
the others have dell desktops and dell laptops. So I duplicated the problem she was having onto another Lenovo T430 laptop and I was able to fixed the issue on this second Lenovo by doing a windows update. BUT, when I did the windows update on the user's laptop,
the issue remained.
This does not make any sense to me and is quite frustrating. I found a work around so the user does not need to close out of all her .xls files when trying to open an .xlsx file. But this work around requires 3 extra steps for each .xlsx she receives from
others. (I've replaced her laptop twice already for other problems so I don't want to do that again.)
If anyone can help shed some light on this, I would greatly appreciate it!
