I had two customers contact me this week because they were suddenly unable to open Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel documents even though they had legal copies of Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition which they had been using for some time. Clients could open Word and Excel and then browse to the file they wanted to open with no problem, but if they double-clicked on a Word or Excel file to open it, they saw the menu shown to the left asking if they wanted to purchase the full version of Office 2010 or start a trial (which would have quit working at the end of the trial period). They also noticed that their Word and Excel icons had changed.
After a bit of hit-and-miss online research, I was able to find that a September 2013 Microsoft update had changed the file associations for Word and Excel files, so the files no longer pointed to their version of Office to open the files. The solution is simple...re-associate the file extensions to Office Starter Edition.
Here is a link to a Microsoft site explaining the problem and how to re-associate the file extensions.
After a bit of hit-and-miss online research, I was able to find that a September 2013 Microsoft update had changed the file associations for Word and Excel files, so the files no longer pointed to their version of Office to open the files. The solution is simple...re-associate the file extensions to Office Starter Edition.
Here is a link to a Microsoft site explaining the problem and how to re-associate the file extensions.
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