Excel focus

[pworth]

This is a really nice program, but there is a little niggle that is stopping it completely taking over from Windows Explorer.

When I try to open a file in Excel directly from MC, whether using the keyboard or mouse, it opens the file, BUT, either Excel stays in the background without focus, or Excel comes to the front but does not have focus (so it is not responsive to the keyboard or mouse).  MC does not do this with other file types such as Word or PDFs, which suggests that it is an issue with Excel, but Windows Explorer and one other similar program that I tried do not have this issue at all.

I open dozens of Excel files every day, so unfortunately this is a bit of a deal breaker.

Hopefully someone can help?  I am using Windows 7 Pro and Excel 2003, if it matters.

Thank you

[Mathias (Author)]

I have not experience that my self (Office 365 , Office 2016 I think), For me Excel is open on top.
But it is a know issue with excel and how excel work that it can happen. Specially if a existing excel instance is already running

However, MC do not have any control over that. MC just tell windows to open the .xls | .xlsx file with what ever program is registered for it and then windows does the rest.

[pworth]

That is a shame.  Windows Explorer and Free Commander both open Excel files OK, so MC must be doing *something* slightly different.

Thanks anyway.

[Mathias (Author)]

Sorry, but No, There is not a different way to do this, It does not work like that.
If it was happening always on all apps for everybody. Then the problem would be with MC.
WinExp might do some special things since they have a deeper integrations into Windows.
Why it works with some programs and not some other are impossible to say. But if you search the net it is a common issue in Win7.
Some people think it is some kind of timing issue with windows. Some people got around it by tweaking some settings in the registry for ForegroundLockTimeout

Or you can configure your own filetype setup in MC for .xls files so MC is launching excel instead of windows.

[pworth]

Or you can configure your own filetype setup in MC for .xls files so MC is launching excel instead of windows.

I set that up, but if Excel is already open, MC opens another instance of Excel, and then warns me that PERSONAL.XLS is already in use.

Adjusting the command line parameters and DDE instructions does not seem to change that.

ForegroundLockTimeout does not work either.