Excel 2003 won't open certain files

[BlueScreen123]

Hello,
I am using Windows XP Pro with Office 2003. Recently I have been having issues opening up certain Excel files. I click on the file and it opens Excel, it says on the bottom that it is opening the file and then it is finished. I just get a grey screen with Excel open but no file. I have sent several of these files to other computers and they open just fine. I have repaired and then reinstalled Office 2003. I have disabled my anti-virus to see if that was blocking it and nothing seems to fix it.
Please help.
Thanks

[fink]

Possibly in need of the Office compatibility pack for Office 2007 docs...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[BlueScreen123]

It has the compatibility pack installed already. And its not a .docx we're trying to open. If I email the file to another computer running the same version of Office it opens right up. I thought it might be Norton, so i turned off scanning of Office documents and that didn't fix it so I turned off Norton completely and that didn't fix it either. Weird

[jdc2000]

Have you tried starting Excel, then clicking File, Open, and navigating to the problem file(s) and selecting them and clicking Open? If that works, then the files are probably OK. It may be the file association that is the problem.

[BlueScreen123]

jdc2000. I tried that as well. There is a progress bar at the bottom left of the page that says "Opening......" Then it finishes and says "Done" but the screen is still gray, Excel is open but the file is not open. I really don't want to have to reformat this computer because of this one annoying little problem. It is very frustrating.
Thanks

[jdc2000]

Did you try uninstalling Office 2003, then removing any leftover files and folders before reinstalling? If you did, then a format and reinstall may be your only option. Digging throught he registry to remove and Office entries would take forever, and it would probably leave your system in an undesirable state anyway.

[BlueScreen123]

I did uninstall, but I didn't remove any leftover files and folders. Is there some kind of Office remover like they have for anti-virus programs that don't uninstall completely?

[jdc2000]

Unfortunately, no.