Slow Opening Excel 2003 Files in Excel 2007 (Updated)

When opening Microsoft Excel 2003 files in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 without having Excel 2007 already running you may find that files that a long time to open (20-60 seconds) while Excel 2007 or even Microsoft Office Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007 files take only a portion of that time to load.

The solution to this problem is easy and does not require any additional software other than the standard Microsoft Windows Explorer.

1. Open Windows Explorer (explorer.exe)
2. Select Tools | Folder Options from the menu
3. Go to the File Types tab.
   
4. Select list item XLS (Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Worksheet) and click on Advanced.
   If the “Appl ication used to perform action:” field the default value should be “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE” /e” . Change this to “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″ . Remember to enclose the full excel.exe path and %1 in parenthesis. Since Windows 95 this is a way to escape spaces in file names; %1 will return the file name of that file that is being opened by double-clicking.You can uncheck “U se DDE” but Microsoft Office Excel 2007 will bring it back to what you see above when you next open it.
   
5. Just confirm (hit “OK” ) on all the Microsoft Windows Explorer dialogs and next time you open a Excel 2003 file in Excel 2007 without having it already running you won’t have to wait!
6. If the above listed steps don’t fix the problem, simply add the Lookup Wizard add-in in Excel. Some readers have reported that solved the problem for them! To install it click the Office Button, Excel Options, Add-Ins, and then click Manage Excel Add-ins | Go on the bottom of the window, select Lookup Wizard and click OK!