OOBE.Documents instead of Excel documents???

Question

I recently bought an Inspiron laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium pre-installed installed. It also had the Microsoft Office 10 trial version pre-installed. I then installed a licenced copy of Microsoft Office 2003 as this has more functionality then the trial version.

Each time I tried to open an excel file via Outlook Explorer it would open in the Version 10 program instead of the 2003 program. As this was not what I wanted I uninstalled the Microsoft Office 10 via the windows uninstall program.

When I now look in Outlook Explorer all my Excel files appear as OOBE.Document types. When I double click to open them they won't open in Excel. However if I first open Excel 2003 and then open the files they do appear normal.

Has anyone come across this issue and how do I correct this, so that the Doc Types appear normal again and they open as they should?

Many thanks,

Erik

Erik99999 · Answer

I indeed refer to Windows Explorer.

The files themselves have not been renamed, they still show .xls or .doc. However Windows Explorer doesn't show them as Excel or Word documents, but as OOBE Documents.

fireberd · Answer

I have Win 7 and Office 2003 (Professional). What is "Outlook Explorer"??? I never heard of that and don't have that on my PC. Are you actually referring to the "Windows Explorer"?

According to what I find doing a google search, you will have to manually rename those files to .xls or whatever they were originally. If you have MS Word files that got renamed to "docx" you will have to rename them to "doc" also.

fireberd · Answer

What happens if you save one of the xls files with Excel 2003? does it change back to what it should be?

Go to the Control Panel and then "Default Programs" then Set Program Associations and check to see if the Excel file types are all set to open with Excel 2003.

Everything may not have been uninstalled when you removed Office 2010. I haven't seen anyone else post about this problem, but that's not to say no one else has had this problem. I have a new Laptop PC (a Lenovo) that came with the trial Office 2010; I never opened Office 2010, I uninstalled it when I first got the PC as I planned on installing my Office 2003. I don't have the problem you have.

If everything works OK and just that it's identified as 00BE, I would leave it as is.

frenchst · Answer

I have exactly the same problem and because I did the same thing, purchased office 2010 and removed the free starter version office 2010 because it told me to remove it and because excel was opening in the starter version.  Now I get OOBE files.  tried default programmes but .xls was not included!  please help us.  anyone.  thanks

Philip_Yip · Answer

Have you tried uninstalling Office 2003 then rebooting then installing it, after the starter is removed?

RoHe · Answer

Read me

Windows General

OOBE.Documents instead of Excel documents???

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