Windows cannot find file when clicking on file?

I get the error message when double clicing on misc documents within my
folders that says "windows cannot find the specified file, please make sure
that you have typed the name correctly and please try again." I can open up
any document from within the application itself by going to file/open finding
the file and opening it that way.

It is extremely random though. It only happens on some of the files. It
happens on older version files (office 2003) and newer version files created
(2007). I can right mouse click the file and specify open with and open the
file with the program that it needs to run it but this is random as well.

I have reinstalled Vista (brand new) pc for the second time trying to fix
this problem and it will not go away. It is driving me crazy!

I have looked all over the web and these dicussions and nobody has ever a
succesful fix for this problem. I am not alone......

I have also unstalled and reinstalled Office 2007 three times. Also
performed repair function. Activation codes all gone now..... I have tried
everything that I have read in previous threads to no avail.

Hi, Matt.

Is this a 'permissions" problem? Are you the Administrator? Are you logged
in as such, or as a limited user?

Have you changed the default settings to show hidden files, etc.?

Since you know the files are there, but you can't reach them from outside
Office, perhaps this is an Office problem. You might get more-focused help
in one of the many Office newsgroups.

Sorry to ask more questions than I've answered, but perhaps the answers to
these will help to narrow down your problem.

Does this KB article help?:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;940791

That fixed my problem. Please know that you are the first one that I have
came found that fixed it! Way to go. There are a lot of people that cant
figure this one out.

It will only open when the Word program is open in the back round. When I
close Word and trying to double click on the Word file the program says
"cannot find specified file" . I can also open the file by right mouse
clicking/open with function. For some reason when Word is not open I cannot
click on the file and open automatically with that file.

Weird. So problem is not fixed after all

Here is another article you can try.

You receive an error message when you try to open an Office document or
start Outlook:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/835404

Hi mlsoup,
The good news is that you are not the only one experiencing this problem.
The bad news is that I am also at a loss as to how to fix it.
I am experiencing this on a brand new PC, running Vista home premium, and
Office 2007.
When using Winows explorer, I can navigate to a file, see the whole path,
only to get an error saying the path is invalid. This happens in both Word
and Excel. Rightclicking and using "open with" launches the application as a
shell, without a document. Finding the document in my "recent documents" and
clicking them will launch the saved document without problems. The files are
visible, not hidden. Like you, I am logged on as administrator. I have tried
saving files in both .xlsx and .xls format (and .docx and .doc), and both
types give me the same problem.
Help!!!

Here is the latest. Now when I double click on the file it launches the
application that I need to run the program and gives me the error message
"windows cannot find the specified file, make sure you typed the name
correctly and try again"

With the application shell open in the backround I can then double click on
the file again and it will open up just fine.

I don't understand why this is happening and want to get by the error
message and have the applicaton open like it should without any error
messages.

Please help..... Thanks.

I have the same problem.

Vista Biz, Office 2007, I use firefox. (not sure why that matters but
saw it in some other posts)
Thinkpad X60.
This was an XP upgrade install of Vista.
My Office and Vista are from my Action Pack.
does not seem to happen with xls files as much. word is pretty much
always.

I hear SP1 will have fixes for this. We shall see.

This solution may work for Excel but it does not work for Word. I doubt I'm
the only one experiencing the problem and it occurred after a recent Windows
Vista update. It would be nice if Microsoft provided fex for a problem they
created...

I also have been having the same problem on an in-law's computer. I
bought the Dell for them, and now it's of course my responsibility to
make sure it's running. I put a copy of Office 2007 on a brand new
computer running Vista Home Premium, and it hasn't worked since day
1. I am at a loss, as I have read and read and can't find a solution.

The only way that word documents will open at all for me is to open
Word previously. As long as it is currently open, it's not a problem
to open documents. Otherwise, I get the message "windows cannot find
file specified" blah blah blah.

I have also noticed that MS Word 2007 is the only Office program
that's set up to run as an Admin. Is there a reason for this?

Anyone who's still having this problem? I messed around for some more
on my own, and here's how I fixed the problem on this computer

Browse in Windows Explorer to <local hd>:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\*\winword.exe

Right Click on winword and go to Properties

Go to Compatibility tab and uncheck "Run this program as an
administrator"

If this is the same problem you are having as I am, you'll notice that
the icon for winword in this folder has a little UAC shield in front
of it. Change this setting, and you should be set.

I would really like to know if this is the same problem others are
having, so please respond with a yay or nay

I was having this problem frequently, but it only started after I
installed a plug-in for Word - specifically the EndNote CWYW plugin.
Since I had to install files manually, in the
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Sta rtup\ directly, I
found that removing them immediately solved my problem.

Perhaps plug-ins that are being loaded with your office apps are
causing the trouble. Although just a guess, you might try shutting a
few of them off temporarily, or looking in the Excel and Word startup
directories (there is a similar one for Excel). If there are files, you
might try temporarily moving them.

Good luck with your issue

[hankuk]

Hi there

I've experienced exactly the same problem. Bad news is that I'm no closer to resolving it.

The good news is though, that I've managed to find a clue.

I found that I could prevent the problem by disabling my antivirus. I use AVG Free edition. As soon as I turned on the AVG and booted Word (or any Office product) from a dbl click document in explorer then the problem occured.

What AV software are u using? and does disabling the AV help?

Hank

I have (had) the exact same problem, only it occurs EVERY time i open a .docx
file from explorer. I, too, have Office 2007 and Windows Vista and found this
really annoying. Reinstalling anything won't work, I've tried uninstalling
and reinstalling Office myself.

SOLUTION:
-Run regedit (Start menu, run, etc.) and go to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\ Addins
(I had three addins here, two from Adobe and one from Microsoft.)
-Export all the addins to a reg file (for backup)
-Then delete all of them in the registry (or one at a time if you want to
know which addin is causing the problem, i didn't bother with that)
-Now try opening a .docx or .doc file in windows explorer and find that
document loads properly with out any error messages!
-now exit MS Word and open the reg file(s) you exported and import them back
-try opening a .docx file again and it appears that the problem is fixed.
This made me really happy! lol.

This also fixed the same problem with excel. It's weird that this problem
happens in the first place and it's even more odd this somehow fixes it.
Please reply if this doesn't work, it's already been two days after I've
done this and there hasn't been any problems so far.

Cheers.

I had the same error trying to open some Doc & DocX files from Vista Windows Explorer, and yet the same files opened fine within Word 2007. I checked the programs associated with the various file extensions and found many of the Word files were associated with MS WORD VIEWER. I am guessing that this user's computer initially had MS WORD VIEWER & Office 2007 was later installed. After some experimentation, I deleted MS WORD VIEWER (via control panel), rebooted, launched Word 2007 directly & Word automatically changed all of the file extension associations to Word. All is well again.

Manually changing the file extensions was not sufficient (I suspect the user was accidentally launching Word Viewer sometimes which switched back the associations).

I wonder if the Excel & PowerPoint viewers can cause similar problems . . .

hey guys sorry to drag up an old thread. but i've been having problems
with various file types on my pc lately. when i double click some files
i get the "windows cannot find" error and when i right-click on the file
itself i get this at the top of the context menu "*[open("%1")]*" (no
outside quotes)

anyone know a solution? NB: no probs with office docs

its a fresh install of vista only. happened again after i downloaded all
the recommended updates.

i was getting it before re-installing too as there were some file
association problems that were driving me nuts (its my work pc)

ok using Acronis True Image Home 2009, I went back to my 1st image
post-install. and it still had this "*[open("%1")]*" but from what i
can see its just on my cakewalk files "*.cwp"...i have some other audio
programs on the same pc and they have no problem at all. must be just a
cakewalk error rather than a vista thing. unless there is a way to fix
it in vista?

is there a way to ADD a program to "default programs"?

yep, always do that with any lost program associations. this one didn't
do it, no matter how many times i tried. (running as admin). its a
cakewalk thing as everything else is fine. I just keep getting a popup
"windows cannot find..." and then the file opens in the propper program
(sonar) anyways. while the popup stays onscreen. crazy!

Although this may not be current date wise. I have had a similar
problem, when I click on an excel doc. in my documents foler I would
keep getting an error message -:mad:- Windows cannot find
"Filename/Path" make sure you typed the name correctly and try again.
:rolleyes: This was sligthly annoying as I could access the file by
opening excel first and then opening the doc. After searching and
reading through many forums for a fix I finally found a resolve for
myself...I simply inserted the Office 2003 install disc and got it to
repair instead of install. Problem solved within a few minutes:D.
I have a feeling that when I used the trial version of Office 2007
bundled on my PC this had some kind of affect in the registry, which in
turn affected my Office 2003 which did not fix when i finished with the
trial version:cry:.

It would have been nice had you detailed your particular problem or
had you quoted a relevant post from the thread you replied to.

[hifismith]

I know this thread is old and I've visited it before, but now I'm motivated to solve this problem.

I've changed virus protection from AVG Free 8.0 to McAfee 8.5.0i and I've used the install disc to repair my 2007 install. And I've tried a few of the KB articles posted, but the problem persists.

My problem is the one where clicking on a file from it's location in windows explorer opens the office program but doesn't open the file and I get the "Cannot find" message. Opening the file from the program works fine.

has there been any more progress on this?

It was a good idea, Viper. I copied an office file into the \office12 folder and I got the same error message. The message says that it can't find the file at the location, and it does find the winword.exe file. Word loads first and then says it can't find the file. Thanks anyway.

That actually worked! Do you know where I can find this %1 error? I haven't corrected the error; I just confirmed that the spaces are an issue.

Edit: It worked for Word files, not Excel files. Unfortunately (for me), I use excel more than word. I did install this *.inf file from Symmantec to correct the %1 issue: http://www.symantec.com/security_res...050614-0532-99

If there's any reason that *.xlsx would behave differently than *.docx files please let me know. Thanks, Eric

I've been living with this problem for at least 6 months and now I'm starting to doubt that it was ever a problem with Word. I'm almost certain it was. I am able to open any Word file in any location. Other files (*.pdf, *.txt, *.html, etc) never had a problem. Still no love for excel, I assumed the problem was with the Office install.

I did do a repair of Office a couple weeks ago, which took about 30 minutes. It didn't help. Thanks for your help. Is it worth doing a complete uninstall and reinstall? I don't know how helpful that would be since some file would remain in place (like my Outlook *.pst files) and I assume some registry entries.

[Viper71]

I guess the "Cannot find" message doens't have to do with the .doc-file being opened, but some plug-in which cannot be found, because Word is being started from an "unknown" location.
When you start Word from it's program-icon, winword.exe is being started from c:\program files\Microsoft Office\Office11, which is first set to the current directory. Any plug-ins to be loaded at the start could be set as relative locations (like ".\addins"), which then cannot be found from your doc-location.
This is only an assumption on my part, based on logic given the symptoms.
To exclude this scenario, you could try to copy one of your doc-files to the winword.exe directory, and open it from there (from explorer).
If it suddenly works fine, then it's an extra argument that this is indeed the case.

Another possibility comes to mind....
Try a doc-file with no spaces in the pathname, not just the filename but the complete path should be space-less. If that works, then it must a registry thing.
If you double-click a file, windows looks at the extension to determine to which app this file belongs, looks up the corresponding application and start it with the file in question as a parameter.
So double-clicking a file, is the same as running something like:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" "C:\Users\John Doe\My Letter.doc".
This is because in the registry, it says something like: app.exe "%1", where %1 will be substituted with the filename as the first parameter. If you would remove the quotes, you would get this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" C:\Users\John Doe\My Letter.doc
The first parameter would be "C:\Users\John", the second would be "\Doe\My" and the third would be "Letter.doc". None of these exist as a loadable file, so it's possible that the parameter-passing of your filename is done without the surrounding quotes.

Sadly, I cannot reproduce the error on my pc (all works well here, and I'm not gonna screw up my system for this, sorry), but it's possible that your registry got screwed up in this area, the "open" command should have a "%1" instead of a %1 (i.e. surrounding with quotes).
The most obvious way to check this, is use a file without spaces in the path, like "C:\Docs\Letter.doc".

In theory, it should be somewhere in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and located in a subtree like shell\open\command.
For instance, if you look in:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wordpad.Document.1\shell\open\co mmand
you would see:
"%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\WORDPAD.EXE" "%1"

Except that all the Office-apps are very well hidden and interlaced real deep within the Windows OS (too well IMHO). This is not strange, if you consider that Office is developed by the same company as the Windows operating system (whose name will remain unmentioned here...)

(At least, I couldn't find any registry-entry with WINWORD.EXE "%1" in it.)
They appearantly don't want you to mess with their settings through any backdoor, so my advice is first try some kind of "repair" from the Office-setup, or do a re-install.

The only key I could find, that remotely matched the search, is:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Oice.Word.Document\shell\open\co mmand
which reads:
C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~2\Office12\Oice.exe "%1"

I even tried removing the quotes (messing it up temporarily), but even then it all kept working fine. Go figure....

I looked at the symantec-inf file, it just resets entries for exe,com,bat,pif,and scr-files. These are alle executables (sort of) and this reset is usefull if your registry is so messed up that you can't even run apps or batchfiles anymore.
(scr is really an .exe(cutable), but renamed to .scr to be recognised by Windows as a screen-saver program)

The difference between doc (docx) and xls (xlsx) is that it triggers another application to open it, that's all. The concept of linking is the same.

But do I understand correctly that you solved the .doc issue with this symantec patch? (that is, not being able to open .doc files from explorer with spaces in the path?)

[presmmbb]

Hey all,

The problem is caused by the MS Outlook Business Contact Manager plugin for word.

Open Registry (start - Run - "regedit") browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\ Addins and (make sure to backup the key before deleting) delete the "BcmHistoryAddin.BcmConnect" folder. (aka "FriendlyName"="Business Contact Manager for Outlook").

This fixed the problem for me. (Verified by adding the key back to the reg and the problem came back, deleted again and the problem went away.)

Good luck!