Hello,

Our company is currently experiencing inconsistencies in how Excel documents
are opening when hyperlinked, hotlinked, or opened through the IE address
bar. For some individuals, they are able to enter a path to an Excel file
(on the C drive or on a shared drive) and it opens the actual file. Others
perform the same action and a copy of the file opens. An example is shown
below.

Action:
1) Open IE and type the following in the address bar: S:\BSC\IT Service
Desk\DS\Software.xls

2) Hit Enter and you are prompted to Open or Save. Click open.

Different Results:
1) On working machines the file opens up the actual file


2) On other machines the file opens as a copy of the file labeled Book1:


Why this is an issue:
This is causing end users to make modifications to a copy of the file
instead of the intended file. They do not find out what they have done until
they try to save the changes they have made.

Our environment:
I am unable to find a setting or common theme on these computers. It is
happening on IE 6 and IE 7 machines. It is happening on Office 2003 SP1 and
Office 2003 SP3 machines. We have approximately 2,500 machines in our
environment and this is happening to many of them but not all.

Notes:
The problem seems to be machine specific and not user specific. I have
verified that there are no files (hidden or not) in the following locations:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\XLSTART
C:\Documents and Settings\(userID)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART


The XLS file association Application used to perfrom action is set to:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" /e %1

Also, I have tried to run c:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\excel.exe /unregserver and then c:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\excel.exe /regserver.



Please let me know any other information you need. Thanks!