Excel file always opens in Excel Services

Question

Hello Forumfriends,

I have got a really weird problem here. Normally with MOSS 2007 if you click an Excel file in a document library directly, it should open in Excel.

With a couple of users, though, the file alway opens in Excel Services and the users have to explicitly tell MOSS to open the file in Excel via the dropdown menu.

I am kind of stuck because it not only happens to only a couple of users (using Vista and Office 2007) but with some users the problem suddenly dissapears and never comes back.

Anyone out there who can give me a tip on how to solve this one?

Thanks!

Jack

 

Answer 1

Hi Jack,

 

The problem may be caused of that you have inadvertently made some changes of the Shared Documents Settings. You can try the following solution to solve this issue:

1.       Go to Central Administration > Your site > Your Documents Library >Settings.

2.       Bottom of the page, you will see Views.

3.       Choose All documents as the Default View.

Then you will solve this issue.

 

Thanks & Regards,

Peng Lei

Answer 2

I am going to answer this myself...

 

I opened a Support Case with Microsoft and they told me the following:

If you disable rights inheritance on a subfolder of a document library, the standardbehaviour for opening Excel files changes from open in Excel to open in IE but only if the user that wants to access the document has less than full access...

If you don't have Excel Services enabled, the user gets an Access Denied.

This has something to do with the default setting for Browser-Enabled documents not being inherited anymore.

Of course, the user can still open the document via the Drop-Down.

This costed us € 299 for the Microsoft call!

 

Cheers!

Jack

 

Answer 3

So Jack,

That doesn't answer the question...

What if the file/subfolder that really needs to disable rights inheritance to take separate settings, and those users are granted with less permission privileges?

We have the exactly same scenario for some READ-only users to open these documents and it just keeps opening in Excel Web Access..

 

Your suggestion/comment is appreciated!

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antibugs

Answer 4

Hi Jack,

A few hours ago, I had a similar issue on a MOSS 2007 SP2 Farm with Excel Services.

Some users could access Excel files with success (using Microsoft Excel, because the Document Library was configured to use the client App by default), meanwhile other users always was accessing Excel files using Excel Web Access. Therefore, the real problem was that some Excel features don't work on Excel Services, getting an Error when a user try to access these Excel files using Excel Services.

Eventually, it was a permission issue, so raising the Permission Level granted to the user, it was possible to access Excel using the Client (Microsoft Excel) instead of using Excel Web Access, as expected.

For further details (but in Spanish): http://www.guillesql.es/Articulos/Error_MOSS_Excel_siempre_abre_Excel_Web_Access_Excel_Services.aspx

Thanks !

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GuilleSQL
http://www.guillesql.es

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