In the beginning, there was KB Article 218153 - "Error message when clicking hyperlink in Office: 'Cannot locate the Internet server or proxy server' ". And it was good. This KB Article contains a registry key change that implements the 'ForceShellExecute' key to resolve the problem in the title of the article. But the fix has an unfortunate side-effect - it can render you unable to follow a hyperlink that points to an Office document. And for that problem KB Article 280680 was written. This article, "Cannot follow hyperlink to Office document" applies to Office 2003. But can this article apply to Office 2007 and 2010?

The answer is, yes it can. The registry keys in the article are split using the following convention:

Excel.Sheet.5 - applies to Excel 95

Excel.Sheet.8 - Applies to Excel versions 97 through 2003

Excel.Sheet.12 - Applies to Excel 2007 and 2010

So to make this article work for Excel 2007 and 2010 you would follow these directions:

1.Click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.

2.In Registry Editor, browse to the following subkey:

For Excel 2003 – modify the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\Shell

For Excel 2007 and 2010 – modify the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\Shell

3.In the shell key, double-click Default, and then type OpenDDE in the Value data box.

4.Right-click the Open key and click Rename. Type OpenDDE.

5.Right-click the Shell key, point to New, and then click Key.

6.Name the new subkey Open.

7.Double-click Default in the Open key, and then type Open without DDE in the Value data box.

8.Right-click the Open key, point to New, and then click Key.

9.Name the new subkey Command.

10.Double-click Default in the Command key, and then type

"<installation path>\Excel.exe" /f "%1"

 Where the installation path by default is

 Office 2010

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE"

 Office 2007

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE"

 Office 2003

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office11\EXCEL.EXE"

 If you are on a 32-bit operating system, remove the (x86) from the path above.

If you're like me, you've got your Excel 2007 or 2010 icon pinned to the Windows 7 task bar. It's no secret that when you right click the icon you are able to left click on any of the recent or frequent files that appear. But what happens when this right click functionality stops working? What do you do when you right click the Excel icon in the task bar and don't get a list of recent files?

Fear not, for here is the answer:

1. Click START, and in the RUN command line enter the following:

%AppData%\Microsoft]Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

2. Find the following entry and delete it:

9839aec31243a928.automaticDestinations-ms

3. Close the page.

No when you right click the Excel icon in the task menu you should see a list of your recent items the way you used to!

Normally copy/paste operations in Excel are pretty instantaneous. You copy data from one place and then paste into a cell in Excel. Pretty straightforward. But what do you do if you notice that copy/paste seems to take an excesseively long time when doing a paste in Excel? There are several things you can look for to resolve a situation like this.

 1. If you are copying from a web page and pasting straight HTML into Excel there can sometimes be a delay during the paste operation. It depends on how much data you are pasting. the cause of the slowness is the formatting of the data itself. One thing you can do is paste the data into a notepad document , then copy and paste the data into Excel. This will strip out formatting and paste raw ASCII into Excel. Excel will then make a determination on the format of the data based on what gets pasted. You can also choose to Paste Special > Values into Excel which just pastes in the value of the data and none of the formatting.

2. Excessive amounts of custom styles can also cause the copy/paste to be slow. If you click on the Home tab in the Ribbon and look under Styles you will see a drop-down (see below pic) that when clicked will display all of your styles. Custom styles show up at the top and can be removed by right clicking the style and left clicking Delete.

3. Memory over-allocation is another cause of slow copy/paste. To check this, in your workbook hit the END button on your keyboard and then the HOME button. If your cursor drops down past the millionth row or to the last column this is an indication of memory over-allocation. To work around this problem you would need to remove all blank and unused rows and columns. After removal, click File > Save to save the changes to the workbook. This is necessary for the new memory allocation to take effect.

4. Finally, a large number of shapes, conditional formatting and pivot tables can also result in slow copy/paste behavior. If you have a large number of autoshapes or shapes in the workbook you can try removing a portion of these to see if the copy/paste time improves. A large number of conditional formatting can also cause slow copy/paste behavior. To check, click the 'Conditional Formatting' drop down under the Styles section of the Home tab and then click Manage Rules. This will open the Conditional Formatting rules manager. You can try deleting unused rules or removing a number of rules to test making the workbook more responsive. Lastly, a large number of pivot tables can cause copy/paste slowness. To work around that problem you can try moving a portion of your pivot tables to separate sheets or even other workbooks.

There are fixes aplenty for Excel in Office 2010 Service Pack 1. You can download the patch from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460049. On this page you can choose to download the 32 or 64-bit version. This is dependent on the bit version of Office that you have, not the operating system bit version. Of course Microsoft recommends that you install the patch as soon as possible.

The cumulative update for Office 2007 and Office 2010 for February 2011 has been released! These updates can be found here:

Office 2007 CU for February 2011 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2493732) and the Office 2011 CU for February 2011 is here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2493730).

These releases includes the following KB articles:

If you've ever used ActiveX controls on your Excel Spreadsheet you may have run into the problem of the control suddenly no longer working. When you open the workbook there's nothing but a big red X in the place of where your control used to be. The tree-view (treeview) control comes to mind, which may have stopped working after applying the fix in KB article 982308 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982308). Fret not, for there is a hotfix available to remedy this behavior. It is here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2483214. This will restore the treeview control to full working order.

Will