Double Clicking an Excel File Will Open Excel but not the Spreadsheet itself

Solution 1:

Go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211494 and it will give a very clear explanation of how to make it so Excel opens the file. I searched on: "Excel 2007 'There was a problem sending the command to the program'" since that was the error message.

Open the Excel application. Here are Microsoft's instructions from that link - very simple to follow!

Microsoft Excel 2010

Click the File tab, and then click Options.
Click Advanced, and then click to clear the Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) check box in the General area.
Click OK.

Microsoft Office Excel 2007

Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options.
Click Advanced, and then click to clear the Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) check box in the General area.
Click OK.

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 or earlier versions of Excel

Click Options, on the Tools menu.
Click the General tab.
Click to clear the Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) check box, and then click OK.

Even if the option Ignore other aplications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is already clear (false), click to enable and then click to disable.

After you do this, you should be able to open workbooks by double-clicking them in Windows Explorer.

Solution 2:

Using @Hennes direction I ended up opening a Windows Explorer Windows and navigating to Tools then Folder Options. Then in the new window I selected the File Types tab.

From there I navigated to XLS and selected Restore and then that button became Advanced. I clicked Advanced and started to edit the line that says Application Used to Perform Action:

At the end of the string there was a %1 which I changed to "%1". I repeated this process for the XLSX extension as well. After closing the window I was able to double click and immediately open any excel files without any issues.