Uncheck Excel's Ignore other applications' DDE and you're done!

You double-click an attachment in Outlook – or Thunderbird – or any mail client or third-party client, for that matter – and you can’t open the file in Office (in my case Excel 2007, but this works for Excel 2003 as well).

But instead of the file, you get a notification telling you that Windows cannot find “filename“. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button and then click search.

Fear not – there’s hope.

Open the application (Excel in my case) and choose the Microsoft Office Logo Button top left. From there, choose the Excel Options tab bottom right of the menu, and choose the Advanced tab.

On the right hand side, choose, under the General heading, to uncheck the option “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).

Click on OK and you’re done!

Should you be using Excel 2003, you’ll find this under Tools -> Options.

And you’re done! But you knew that already! 🙂