Great, thanks! Worked beautifully.

@Neil, this is not happening on win7 with office 2010, maybe a wild shot but try to wrap your parameter with single quotes like "'%1'"

Hi
Using Win7 and Exce 2000

Being going very well with no problems. Now has started showing a message when I try to open Excel.   Windows cannot access the specified file or device....
Have tried a lot of things but still have not got Excel to open.Reinstalled Office 2000, tried to get the registry changed get same message, changed setting in IE etc.  Is there a way to open Excel so I can change the dde settings etc.  Word is working ok.  Could a file be a problem, how do I find which one?

Thanks

My setup: WIN7 64bit, Office 2010 32bit, SharePoint 2007

I had basically the same problem, but above mentioned solutions didn’t work in all cases (for example when opening both files from SharePoint … )

Solution:

I applied these steps [Paul White steps from above]:

-  To these branches:

           HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTExcel.Sheet.12shell

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTExcel.Sheet.8shell

Sub branch: Edit, New, Open, OpenAsReadOnly, ViewProtected

Thank you for all your help, I would not figure it out myself :) 

win7, office 2010

i've got it working when opening an existing document from local drive.

a problem that i have is that we use an online file system so exel is launched from IE.  any idea how to change it there?

Just to make sure everyone is aware - this registry hack breaks functionality like copy/paste, linking, etc.  Excel 2010 and previous releases are supposed to work within the same window by design.

Use at your own risk if the positives outweigh the negatives for you.

Paul I think I love you! I hate the fact that Excel 2010 opens in one single window in Win7 but presents several program icons in the activity field. But all it took was a search on Google and there your blog post were like an angel sent from heaven! ;) Thanks for sharing your tips! :)

This works in regards to Excel opening in new instances opposed to opening in default parent excel window.

However, customers are no longer able to successfully open excel attachments in Outlook 2010. Unchecking the option to ignore other applications that use DDE allows Excel attachments to open successfully in Outlook but then the behavior reverts back to opening excel workbooks in the parent workbook instead of a new instance. Maybe I am missing something here, has anyone run into this issue?

Help.. Opening Excel 2010 spreadsheets in their own individual windows. ( I do not want to open multiple windows in one spreadsheet )

Hi! Sorry from my english, from Ru :)

Do you know resource, where described this keys: /e, /dde?

Awsome! After months of frustration each time I had to open several excels (every day), I spent about 2 days to reach your answer and it works!

Stupid Microsoft peoples!!! (to be politicaly correct) They have to learn to simplify things instread of making them complicated every release. They never learn human relation and they never heard peoples don't like changes like that. Maybe should we gather money to send them to Apple dev center to learn how changes can be introduce to avoid peoples to make suicides :-) I am ready to put 5 cents on that!

may the heavens bless your offspring.
thank you so much!

What about *.xlsm files?  Would like to do the same thing for them; the other 2 extensions above work great as listed, have been using these instructions for years.

WOW...if I could send you paypal $ for this I WOULD...THANK YOU...amazing how these little things make your life so much easier!

No Need Chad.  Glad this has helped others.  

import sys
import win32com.client as win32

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
        sys.exit(1)

    filepath = sys.argv[1]

    excel = win32.DispatchEx('Excel.Application')
    excel.Visible = True
    excel.Workbooks.Open(filepath)

Build it with pyinstaller. Go "Open with" and set the exe as the default.

Thank you so so so so much this is a life saver and works like a charm!