When I open excel 2004 running 10.4.4, several recent workbooks open simultaneously ... It also tries opening some other documents ... What's it thinking? - that the user made 'preference' setting changes, and / or saved files where 'Excel' expects to find files to auto open - when launched.
As per 'Excel's 'Help' menu's 'Microsoft Office Help' feature (when 'Open' is entered into the search text field' ...
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Open a workbook automatically each time Excel starts
1. In the Finder, move the icon of the workbook you want to open to the Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Excel folder.
If the workbooks you want to use are stored on a network drive, or if you don't want to move workbooks from their current location, create an alias for the workbook files. On the desktop, use the Make Alias command (File menu), and then move the alias to the Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Excel folder.
For more information about the Make Alias command, see Mac Hel2. Restart Excel.
Tip To open a group of related workbooks each time you start Excel, save the workbooks in a workspace file, and then place the workspace file in the startup folder.
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and then there is ...
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Stop a workbook from loading each time Excel starts
There is no way to prevent a file from opening so long as it is stored in either the Excel startup folder or the alternate startup folder.
To prevent a file from opening each time Excel starts, you must move the workbook icon out of the Excel startup folder or the alternate startup folder.
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Typically, 'Excel' presents an alert box for those formats ('.jpg', '.mp3', , '.pdf'. '.rar', '.scpt''.zip', etc.) it is incapable of displaying properly or garbled. Some incompatible files will be displayed - garbled, without any alert box displayed.
