Excel Woes

I have a problem that has me stumped.
Excel Doc's that have been emailed to me as attachments and downloaded to a folder and will not open in Excel by double-clicking ( or right-click+open).
Excel will open but the document wont.

BUT,

if i open Excel first that use the toolbar to select and open the file it works.

Any suggestions as to why it is doing this?

I checked the permissions on the file and for my user account everything there appears to be correct.

This is not a critical issue, but i would like to know in case the problem arises for someone else.

 

hold shift.. then right click on the file.. choose OPEN WITH.. choose excel from the list of programs and make sure you CHECK THE BOX on the bottom left. This will associate xls files with excel.

 

That didn't work Kodo.... any other suggestions? I appreciate the advice

 

bump

 

bump again

 

I will try those, thanks Halo.

I am running Office2003 and it is up to date.

And yes I am on a Network, althou these are locally saved files.

 

The second MS link worked Halo! Thanks much!