Excel workbook opening problem

[Puzzled Novice]

I'm running Excel 2007 and Vista on a Dell desktop PC. For some time now I have only been able to open an Excel workbook if I first of all open Excel itelf and then use 'Open' icon to find the workbook document and then open it from there. If Excel isn't open and I try to open a workbook that, eg, I've found using Windows Explorer I get an error message reading:

"Windows cannot find 'C:\Users\Family-Administrator\Documents\My Documents\xxxx\xxxx\xxx.xls'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."

Excel itself appears to have opened behind the error message but for some reason it won't open the workbook document.

I've checked the file path in the error message and it is the correct one, it's the same as the file path if I open the workbook from within Excel.

Excel didn't have this problem when I first installed MS Office 2007 a couple of years ago, the problem just started for no obvious reason one day. The problem doesn't occur if I'm opening Word or PowerPoint documents, eg if I click a Word file anywhere it automatically opens Word and then the document.

Any suggestions how I fix this? It's annoying me that I always have to open Excel first!

 

[VoG]

Possibly...

Click the Office button (top left), click Excel Options, click Advanced, scroll down to General and make sure that Ignore other Applications... is not checked.

 

[Puzzled Novice]

That's solved it! Many thanks VoG - I'd never have worked that out for myself if I'd sat here til the end of time!