You receive an error message when you try to open a file type that was blocked by your registry policy settings in Excel 2010, Excel 2007 or Excel 2003
This issue may occur if an administrator has restricted the
types of files that you can open
in Microsoft Office Excel 2010, Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or Microsoft Office Excel 2003. To do
this, an administrator can set a registry key to restrict this functionality.
By default, the following file types are blocked in Excel 2010:
Excel 4 Workbooks
Excel 4 Worksheets
Excel 3 Worksheets
Excel 2 Worksheets
Excel 4 Macrosheets and Add-in Files
Excel 3 Macrosheets and Add-in Files
Excel 2 Macrosheets and Add-in Files
For Excel 2010, the registry key can be set in the 2010 Office System Administrative Templates. For more information, see "Excel 2010" subsection of the "More Information" section.
For Excel 2007, the registry key can be set in the 2007 Office System
Administrative Templates. For more information, see "Excel 2007" subsection of
the "More Information" section.
For Excel 2003, update 933666 enables
an administrator to block the ability to save or to open files in Excel 2003.
For more information, see the "Excel 2003" subsection of the "More Information"
section.
By default, the following
files are blocked in Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3:
Microsoft Excel 4.0 Charts (.xlc)
DBF 2 (dBASE II) (.dbf)
For more information, click the
following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
938810 Information about certain file formats that are blocked after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3
Important This section, method,
or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However,
serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore,
make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up
the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a
problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the
registry, click the following article number to view the article in the
Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756
How to back up and restore the registry
in Windows
To open files that are blocked by the registry, you can disable the restriction on opening presentations that were blocked by the registry settings of Excel. To do this, click to expand the section according to which version of Excel you are using.
In Excel 2003, there are no trusted locations. You can
create an exempt location to override the registry policy settings. To create
an exempt location, follow these steps:
Exit Excel 2003.
Click Start, click
Run, type regedit in the
Open box, and then click OK.
Locate and then click to select one of the following
registry subkeys:
Point to New on the
Edit menu, and then click String Value.
Type a string name, and then press ENTER. For example,
type ExemptDirectory.
Right-click the string name that you typed in step 7,
and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the path
of the directory that contains the file, and then click OK.
Note You must create the folder. Any subfolders are not automatically
exempted. For any additional folders that you would like to make exempt, repeat
steps 6-9.
On the File menu, click
Exit to exit Registry Editor.
Note You can also contact the system administrator to change the Group Policy setting.
To restrict the types of files that you can open or save in Excel 2010, an administrator can use the 2010 Office System Administrative Templates to configure the registry on the client computer.
To download the 2010 Office System Administrative Templates, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
For more specific information about how to use settings to block the opening and saving of file formats in the 2010 Office programs, visit the following Microsoft Web site, and then see the "Group Policy overview for Office 2010" topic:
:
To restrict the types of files that you can open in
Excel 2007, an administrator can use the 2007 Office System Administrative
Templates to configure the registry on the client computer.
The
following table contains the DWORD names that an administrator can add to the
registry to restrict certain file types by using the FileOpenBlock subkey.
Additionally, the table contains the corresponding file types that are
restricted.
Collapse this tableExpand this table
DWORD name
File types that are restricted
OpenXmlFiles
.xlsx, .xlsm, .xltx, .xltm, .xlam
Binary12Files
.xlsb
BinaryFiles
.xls, .xla, .xlt, .xlm, .xlw, .xlb
HtmlandXmlssFiles
.mht, .mhtml, .htm, .html, .xml,
.xmlss
XmlFiles
.xml
DifandSylkFiles
.dif, .slk
TextFiles
.txt, .csv, .prn
XllFiles
.xll (.dll)
To download the 2007 Office System Administrative
Templates, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
For more specific information about how to use settings to
block the opening and saving of file formats in the 2007 Office programs, visit
the following Microsoft Web site, and then see the "Enforce settings by using
Group Policy in the 2007 Office system" topic:
Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
How to back up and restore the registry in Windows
An administrator can restrict the types of files
that you can open
in Excel 2003. This ability was not provided in Microsoft Office 2003
when it was originally released. To restrict the types of files that can be
opened in
Excel 2003, install security update 933666.
For more information about security
update 933666, click the following article number to view the article in the
Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Description of the security update for Excel 2003: May 8, 2007
To restrict the types of files that you can
open in
Excel 2003, an administrator can use one of the following methods:
Use the updated Office 2003 Administrative Templates to
configure the registry on the client computer.
Modify the registry by adding a registy key setting on the
client computer. To download the Office 2003 Service Pack 3 Administrative
Template (ADM), OPAs, and Explain Text Update, visit the following Microsoft
Web site:
The following table contains the DWORD names that an
administrator can add to the registry to restrict certain file types by using
the FileOpenBlock subkey. Additionally, the table contains the corresponding
file types that are restricted.
Collapse this tableExpand this table
DWORD name
File types that are restricted
BinaryFiles
.xls, .xla, .xlt, .xlm, .xlw, .xlb
HtmlandXmlssFiles
.mht, .mhtml, .htm, .html, .xml,
.xmlss
XmlFiles
.xml
DifandSylkFiles
.dif, .slk
TextFiles
.txt, .csv, .prn
XllFiles
.xll
Converters
All file formats that are available by
using a text converter (including the Office Compatibility Pack)
Microsoft Excel 4.0 Charts (.xlc) files
(Office 2003 SP3)
LegacyDatabaseAndDatasourceFiles
DBF 2 (dBASE II)
(.dbf) files (Office 2003 SP3)
To enable the FileOpenBlock subkey settings, follow these steps:
Exit Excel.
If you are running
Excel 2003, install
security update 933666 if it is not installed, and then go to step 3. If you are running Excel 2007, go to step 3.
Click Start, click Run,
type regedit in the Open box, and then
click OK.
Locate and then click to select one of the following
registry subkeys:
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