Why is double clicking not working on Excel?

Frank was having a problem with Excel not opening a workbook whenever he would double-click on it in Windows. Excel would start, but the workbook would not load, and Excel would report that it couldn't find the file that was double-clicked.

Table of Contents Show

8 Possible Solutions for Excel File Not Opening on Double Click
Solution 1: Uncheck the “Ignore other applications that use DDE” Option
Solution 2: Open Excel in Safe Mode
Solution 3: Choose Excel as Default App to Open Excel Files
Solution 4: Force Excel to Reconstruct File Association Information
Solution 5: Reset Windows Registry to Excel’s Factory Defaults
Solution 6: Turn Off Excel Add-Ins
Solution 7: Check the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration”
Solution 8: Repair Microsoft Office
Things to Remember
Why is my Excel double

This sounds like a problem with the file associations in Windows. The first thing to try is to force Excel to reconstruct all the proper association information. You do that by following these steps:

Make sure that Excel is not running (exit the program).
Click the Start button to displays the Start menu.
From the Start menu, choose Run. Windows displays the Run dialog box.
In the Open box, enter the full path name to your Excel program, followed by the /regserver switch. If the full path name includes spaces, surround the full path name by quote marks. The following is an example of what you can enter in the Open box (your path may be different):

     "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe" /regserver

Click OK.

Now try double-clicking on your workbook again. It should open as you expect. If it doesn't, try this:

Normally, Excel allows you to double-click on the divider bar between column heads in order to widen a column. For instance, if you need to widen column C, all you need to do is move the mouse so it points to the divider between column headers for column C and column D; the mouse pointer changes to a double-headed arrow. When you double-click, column C is widened to accommodate the widest information in its cells.

There are times when double-clicking to widen a column won't work, however. In particular, Excel won't widen a column in this manner if the worksheet is protected. (The obvious solution is to unprotect the worksheet.)

You also cannot double-click to widen if the column is formatted using the Wrap Text attribute. You can use any different method of widening the column, but you cannot double-click.

This article illustrates how to fix the issue of not opening an Excel file on double click with 8 possible solutions. The issue can be caused for many reasons. We’ll discuss every possible solution to solve the annoying situation. Let’s dive into the solutions to find and solve the issue of not opening an Excel file on double click.

Table of Contents hide

8 Possible Solutions for Excel File Not Opening on Double Click

Solution 1: Uncheck the “Ignore other applications that use DDE” Option

Solution 2: Open Excel in Safe Mode

Solution 3: Choose Excel as Default App to Open Excel Files

Solution 4: Force Excel to Reconstruct File Association Information

Solution 5: Reset Windows Registry to Excel’s Factory Defaults

Solution 6: Turn Off Excel Add-Ins

Solution 7: Check the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration”

Solution 8: Repair Microsoft Office

Things to Remember

Conclusion

8 Possible Solutions for Excel File Not Opening on Double Click

In this section, we will explore 8 specific solutions that will help you with this problem.

Solution 1: Uncheck the “Ignore other applications that use DDE” Option

The dynamic data exchange (DDE) protocol is one of the methods for transferring data between applications. If the “Ignore other applications that use DDE” is selected in Excel’s configuration, then it’ll ignore all the messages sent by other applications via DDE. As a result, double–clicking an Excel file from the windows explorer doesn’t open it. To solve the problem, we need to uncheck the option with the following steps.

Go to the File tab from the Excel Ribbon.
Click the Options.
In the Excel Options window, select the Advanced tab.
Uncheck the “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)” option under the General section.
Finally hit OK to save the settings.

Read More: Fix Excel Not Responding and Save Your Work

Solution 2: Open Excel in Safe Mode

It is possible that an add–in or extension is the reason behind not opening an Excel file with a double click. To identify that we can open the Excel file in safe mode. To do this-

From the start menu, choose the Run App.

In the Run dialogue box, type excel /safe to open the Excel in safe mode.

Note: We need to put a space before the slash.

Finally hit the OK button.

Hopefully, it’ll solve the issue and open the desired Excel file with a double click.

Solution 3: Choose Excel as Default App to Open Excel Files

We can check and assign MS Excel as the default application to open those Excel files. To do this, follow the steps below.

Go to the windows settings from the start menu.
Click on the Apps option.

From the Settings window, click on the Default apps tab.
Click on the “Choose default apps by file type” link.

Finally, choose Excel for the desired file extensions.

Read More: [Fix:] Excel File Opens but Does Not Display

Solution 4: Force Excel to Reconstruct File Association Information

We need to fix the file association in windows if a file doesn’t open correctly after double-clicking or doesn’t open with the correct application. In this case, we can make Excel reconstruct the file association information. Let’s follow the simple steps below.

Open the Run App from the Start menu.

In the Run dialogue box, we need to put the full path of the Excel file that is followed by “/regserver”. To get the full path of the Excel file, we need to press Shift and right–click on the Excel file. For example, we have an Excel file in the Exceldemy folder in the D drive.

So, we need to put the “D:\Exceldemy\book1.xlsx” /regserver” in the Open input box of the Run dialogue box.

Finally, click OK.

Hopefully, the above approach will resolve the issue of not opening on double click.

Read More: [Fixed!] Unable to Open Excel Files Directly by Clicking on the File Icon

Solution 5: Reset Windows Registry to Excel’s Factory Defaults

We can reset the windows registry for an application to its factory defaults. The “/regserver” switch will register the application newly and recreate the application–related registry entries. The command will also refresh the file associations.

To reset the windows registry for Excel, we need to open the Run App from the Start menu and put the command “excel /regserver” in the Open input box.

Click the OK button to execute the command so that it fixes the issue of not opening on double click.

Solution 6: Turn Off Excel Add-Ins

Turning off the Excel and COM add–in programs could also solve the issue of not opening an Excel file on double click. We’ll follow the approach of turning off each of the add–ins at a time to see which one actually conflicts. For information, these two add–ins are located in two different folders. Let’s follow the simple steps.

Go to the File tab from the Excel Ribbon.
Click the Options
In the Excel Options window, select the Add-ins tab.
From the Manage list, choose Excel or COM Add-ins.
Click the Go button.

Remove one add–in at a time and click OK.

After all the above steps, double click to restart the Excel file to see whether it opens or not. If the issue of not opening still remains, follow the above steps again to remove the other add-ins.

Read More: Excel Not Responding When Opening File (8 Handy Solutions)

Solution 7: Check the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration”

We could try out another way to solve the issue of not opening an Excel file on double click i.e., enabling the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” option. For this, do the following.

Go to the File tab from the Excel Ribbon.
Click the Options.
In the Excel Options window, select the Advanced tab.
Check the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” option under the Display section.

Finally, click the OK button to save the settings.

Read More: [Fix:] Excel File Opens but Does Not Display

Solution 8: Repair Microsoft Office

We could try to repair Microsoft office programs and then whether the issue still exists or not. Do the following to repair the Microsoft office.

Click on the Start icon.
Type Control Panel.
Select the Control Panel.

Select Microsoft 365.
Click on the Change button.
Select Online Repair and then again select the Repair option.

Things to Remember

The above solutions are the most reliable to solve the issue of not opening an Excel file on double click. In many cases, you need to restart the application or even the computer to see the changes.
In the 2nd solution, to open a file in safe mode, we need to write the command right in the Run dialogue box. There must be a space before the slash to execute the command.

Conclusion

Now, we know how to fix the issue of not opening an Excel file on double click with 8 different solutions. Hopefully, it would help you to use these methods more confidently. Any questions or suggestions don’t forget to put them in the comment box below.

Why is my Excel double

On the File menu, select Options, and then select Add-Ins. In the Manage list at the bottom of the screen, select COM Add-Ins item, and then select Go. Clear one of the add-ins in the list, then select OK. Restart Excel by double-clicking the icon or file name for the workbook that you are trying to open.