How to configure Internet Explorer to open Office documents in the appropriate Office program instead of in Internet Explorer

When you click an HTML link to a Microsoft Office file (such as a Microsoft Word or Excel document), Internet Explorer may open the file in Internet Explorer, instead of opening the file in the appropriate Office program.

This behavior may occur if Internet Explorer is configured to host documents for Office programs that are installed on the computer. By default, Internet Explorer is configured to host documents for Office programs.

To have us configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate Office program for you, go to the "Fix it for me" section. If you prefer to fix this problem yourself, go to the "Let me fix it myself" section.

Fix it for me

To fix this problem automatically, click the Fix it button or link. Click Run in the File Download dialog box, and follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.




Notes

• This wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
• If you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem.

Next, go to the "Did this fix the problem?" section.

Let me fix it myself

To configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate Office program instead of in Internet Explorer, use one of the following methods.

Note These methods configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate Office program for all users."

Method 1: Use the Folder Options tool

Note If you are running Windows NT 4.0, you may not be able to use the following procedure to configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate Office program. If you are running Windows NT 4.0, use Method 2.

Note If you are running Terminal Server on Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003, you may not be able to click Advanced to open the Edit File Type dialog box in step 4 of this procedure. This issue occurs if the NoFileAssociate policy is enabled. Enabling this policy prevents users (including administrators) from changing file type associations for all users. For additional information about this behavior, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate Office program by using the Folder Options tool:

1. Open My Computer.
2. On the Tools menu (or the View menu), click Folder Options (or click Options).
3. Click the File Types tab.
4. In the Registered file types list, click the specific Office document type (for example, Microsoft Excel Worksheet), and then click Advanced (or click Edit).
5. In the Edit File Type dialog box, click to clear the Browse in same window check box (or click to clear the Open Web documents in place check box).
6. Click OK.

Method 2: Edit the Windows Registry

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:
To configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate Office program by editing the Windows registry, set the BrowserFlags DWORD value to a correct value for the appropriate document type. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and then click the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes
3. Locate the subkey for the specific Office document type. The following table lists the subkeys for several common Office document types.

   Document Type                                                 		Subkey
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Microsoft Office Excel 95 Worksheet                      		Excel.Sheet.5
   Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Worksheet                 		Excel.Sheet.8 
   Microsoft Office Excel 2007-2010 Worksheet               		Excel.Sheet.12
   Microsoft Office Excel 2007-2010 Macro-Enabled Worksheet 		Excel.SheetMacroEnabled.12
   Microsoft Office Excel 2007-2010 Binary Worksheet        		Excel.SheetBinaryMacroEnabled.12  
   Microsoft Office Word 95 Document                        		Word.Document.6
   Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 Document                   		Word.Document.8
   Microsoft Office Word 2007-2010 Document                 		Word.Document.12
   Microsoft Office Word 2007-2010 Macro-Enabled Document   		Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12
   Rich Text Format                                         		Word.RTF.8
   Microsoft Office PowerPoint 95 Presentation              		PowerPoint.Show.7
   Microsoft Office PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation         		PowerPoint.Show.8
   Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007-2010 Macro-Enabled Presentation     	PowerPoint.Show.12
   Microsoft Office PowerPoint 97-2003 Slide Show           		PowerPoint.Show.8
   Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007-2010 Slide Show         		PowerPoint.Show.12
   Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007-2010 Macro-Enabled Slide Show     	PowerPoint.ShowMacroEnabled.12
   Microsoft Excel 7.0 worksheet                                           Excel.Sheet.5
   Microsoft Excel 97 worksheet						Excel.Sheet.8
   Microsoft Excel 2000 worksheet                                          Excel.Sheet.8
   Microsoft Word 7.0 document                                             Word.Document.6
   Microsoft Word 97 document                                              Word.Document.8
   Microsoft Word 2000 document                                            Word.Document.8
   Microsoft Project 98 project                                            MSProject.Project.8
   Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 document                                      PowerPoint.Show.8
   						

   To locate the subkey for a document type that is not included in this table, find the subkey for the extension that is associated with the document type. The (default) value for that subkey contains the name of the subkey for that document type. For example, the .xls extension is associated with Excel worksheets. Under the .xls subkey, the (default) value contains the string "Excel.Sheet.5." Therefore, the subkey for the Microsoft Excel Worksheet document type is the following subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.5
4. After you identify the subkey for the specific Office document type, follow these steps:
   1. If the Office document is an Microsoft Office Excel document, add the following value for all Microsoft Office Excel subkeys except the Excel.Sheet.5 subkey:
      Value name: BrowserFlags
      Data type: REG_DWORD
      Value: 8
      For the Excel.Sheet.5 subkey, add the following value:
      Value name: BrowserFlags
      Data type: REG_DWORD
      Value: 9
   2. If the Office document is an Microsoft Office Word document or an Rich Text Format document, add the following value for all Microsoft Office Word subkeys except the Word.Document.12 subkey, the Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12 subkey and the Word.RTF.8 subkey.
      Value name: BrowserFlags
      Data type: REG_DWORD
      Value: 8
      For the Word.Document.12 subkey, the Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12 subkey and the Word.RTF.8 subkey, add the following value:
      Value name: BrowserFlags
      Data type: REG_DWORD
      Value: 44(Decimal)
   3. If the Office document is an Microsoft Office PowerPoint document, add the following value for all subkeys except PowerPoint.SlideShow.12 and PowerPoint.SlideShowMacroEnabled.12.
      Value name: BrowserFlags
      Data type: REG_DWORD
      Value: 10(Decimal)
      For PowerPoint.SlideShow.12 and PowerPoint.SlideShowMacroEnabled.12, delete the BrowerFlags if it exists.
5. Click OK, and then quit Registry Editor.

Did this fix the problem?

• Check whether the problem is fixed. If the problem is fixed, you are finished with this section. If the problem is not fixed, you can contact support
  (http://support.microsoft.com/contactus)
  .
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  (http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/)
  " blog or send us an e-mail
  (mailto:fixit4me@microsoft.com?Subject=KB)

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: