Windows File Explorer Not Working Correctly

[hlewton]

The selection inside the red lines is what I see when Right Clicking on 2 Excel files in Windows File Explorer. Including yesterday in the morning when I chose 2 excel Files to open I had the option within that box to choose “Open.” It is gone. Now this is a brand new computer and I am sure I did nothing to mess it up but here is what happened yesterday. There were some Windows 10 updates for version 1909. They ran and then installed. When they finished installing and rebooting my Office 365 subscription would no longer work. I had to get a hold of a support technician for Office 365 and he reinstalled my Office. I had this happen on another computer recently so I asked him about why this was happening. He reluctantly said MS was aware of this problem and was working on fixing it.

Anyway now I no longer have the Right Click Open choice in Windows File Explorer. Is there a way I can get that back?

Open.jpg

[CraigS26]

https://www.howtogeek.com/261076/how-to ... text-menu/

Maybe Hans can comment on this approach I found - AND - IF you decide to Back-up your system (best) and Try this Registry Mod .... the -- shellex-- Folder is #3 in My - * - Group choices; ( Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex ) on the way to
Target ( Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers ) ... Never dreamed an S would be at the top so I clk'd the - * - Dn arrow and raced to the bottom looking for the S's ............

[hlewton]

https://www.howtogeek.com/261076/how-to ... text-menu/

Maybe Hans can comment on this approach I found - AND - IF you decide to Back-up your system (best) and Try this Registry Mod .... the -- shellex-- Folder is #3 in My - * - Group choices; ( Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex ) on the way to
Target ( Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers ) ... Never dreamed an S would be at the top so I clk'd the - * - Dn arrow and raced to the bottom looking for the S's ............

Thank you but I still have the "Open With" command just not the "Open" command.

[HansV]

Since Microsoft has reinstalled Office, I'd contact them again. Apparently they didn't do it correctly.

I wouldn't start messing with the registry for this problem, it'd be far too much work.

[hlewton]

Since Microsoft has reinstalled Office, I'd contact them again. Apparently they didn't do it correctly.

I wouldn't start messing with the registry for this problem, it'd be far too much work.

I tried running sfc /scannow and it found nothing.

I only have support for Office 365 not Windows. You think reinstalling Office messed this up?

[HansV]

The context menu items for Office documents (New, Open, Print) aren't built into Windows. They should be added when Office is installed. If they are missing, something went wrong while Office was installed. So it is not a Windows problem but an Office problem.

[hlewton]

The context menu items for Office documents (New, Open, Print) aren't built into Windows. They should be added when Office is installed. If they are missing, something went wrong while Office was installed. So it is not a Windows problem but an Office problem.

Thanks. The tech I have contacted is trying to tell me it is a windows issue.

[HansV]

As I mentioned, the special context menu items for Office documents are created by Office, not by Windows...

[hlewton]

As I mentioned, the special context menu items for Office documents are created by Office, not by Windows...

Yep I just told them that and now they are trying to transfer me back to Office 365 support with a higher level technician. Hopefully I get one that can help.

[hlewton]

As I mentioned, the special context menu items for Office documents are created by Office, not by Windows...

I just got off the phone with Office support and they could not fix it. They are transferring me to Windows tech support which we know probably won't help.

Here is what we did. We uninstalled Office using Office's uninstall option. Reinstalled it and still did not have the context menu.

I then, with him on the phone, used revo uninstaller to uninstall Office and all of the registry entries it found. Once more installed Office and I still do not have the context menu. Is there a registry edit that would fix this?

[hlewton]

Also I should mention that since this problem started every time I reboot Word opens anywhere from 2 to 4 occasions of it. Can that be fixed?

[HansV]

About the latter: see Word auto starts at Win 10 boot (thanks to BobArch2)

[hlewton]

I was on the phone with MS support for over 5 hours. He found out that my account, which was my first name, was corrupt. More than likely from the Office 365 crash yesterday after trying to update. I can not tell you all the steps he took but essentially he created an new user account named New User. Then he transferred, supposedly, all my files from my corrupt user account. He then deleted that account in my name and renamed the New User Account to my name. That made the context menu items of (New, Open, and Print) once again visible. he had to keep making many, many other tweaks to get my machine to respond close to what it was doing before Office 365's crash.

It took him forever just to get his remote session window to not open after every reboot and even after closing it once the reboot was done it would start up again. He finally got that fixed, I hope.

I essentially lost an entire week's worth of effort and setting up my folder shortcuts to my other network computers. I am a lot frustrated over that.

However, there is still a problem and I cannot figure it out. Any help would be appreciated. I have a folder full of icons and I customize my desktop icons with the ico I file want to use. Some of the shortcuts, though they take me to the WEB site will not allow me to change the icon to what I want to. Thoughts please.

[hlewton]

https://www.howtogeek.com/261076/how-to ... text-menu/

Maybe Hans can comment on this approach I found - AND - IF you decide to Back-up your system (best) and Try this Registry Mod .... the -- shellex-- Folder is #3 in My - * - Group choices; ( Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex ) on the way to
Target ( Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers ) ... Never dreamed an S would be at the top so I clk'd the - * - Dn arrow and raced to the bottom looking for the S's ............

Since Microsoft has reinstalled Office, I'd contact them again. Apparently they didn't do it correctly.

I wouldn't start messing with the registry for this problem, it'd be far too much work.

An Office 365 update, once again it caused the Right Click options of Open, New, and Print to vanish. As Hans says above, these options are part of the installation of Office. In addition, this time, and maybe it was the same before, a Windows support technician also noticed that the option to scan using Windows defender was missing.


It appears they are now saying that a clean Windows install is necessary but that is the last thing I would want to do. We did do a complete uninstall of Office 365 using Revo Uninstaller Pro to remove all traces of Office and then reinstalled it but that didn't fix the problem. In watching the first Office support person I noticed he tried to edit the Registry key, which is the same one that CraigS26 refers to above –

HKEY-CLASSES_ROOT
*
shellex
ContextMenuHandlers


but it did no good. I am thinking he may have had the wrong Registry key.


Does anyone know what Registry Key the installation of Office 365 edits to give the Right Click menu the Open, New, and Print options? And then what editing needs to be done to fix this problem.

Even though, as Hans mentions, it may be a lot of work, I am not sure how else to fix this without completely reinstalling Windows. I have worked with both Office support techs and Windows support techs over the last couple weeks and they have no clue which Registry key to edit. If anyone knows, and if it is too much work to tell me how to fix it, maybe I could force them to make the edits. Or maybe if I know the Registry key to edit I could copy that same key from one of my computers that is working correctly.

Thanks

[HansV]

As an example, here is the tree in the left-hand pane of RegEdit for just one file type:

S3419.png

Most of the entries have one or more values in the right-hand pane. It is far too complex to edit them manually, and in my opinion it's too risky to copy all necessary entries from another computer.

If you don't want to reinstall Windows, I'd live with this minor problem. You can always open and print documents from within Word, workbooks from within Excel etc.

[hlewton]

Thanks Hans that is what I have been doing. Windows support once again found these items were available if they created another account on my machine but that too causes me a lot of repeated work. So I suggested we try installing Windows 10 ver. 2004 if he thought that would do any good. He thought it would but on checking Windows Updates it was not available for download and installation on my machine. So he tried installing it using MediaCreationTool2004.exe after checking to make sure my machine was compatible and it was. After this tool got so far it said something to the affect that ver. 2004 was not yet ready to be installed on my computer and then it removed whatever files it had already installed.

[jolas]

This is a registry edit solution you may like to try.

[hlewton]

This is a registry edit solution you may like to try.

Thank you. I will definitely look into that and see if possibly that DWORD is missing or has been changed. I am only trying to open 1 or 2 files at a time but possibly that DWORD was affected by that attempt to update Office.

[hlewton]

This is a registry edit solution you may like to try.

I found the MultipleInvokePromptMinimum Registry 3 places in the Registry and all three had the Decimal number set at 100. I tried setting it at 15 in the 1 Registry key that this link refers to but that did not bring my missing Right Click context menu items back. Thanks for the tip though.

[hlewton]

Well I thought I had the problem of the right click options, "Open," "New," and "Print" solved but apparently that isn't the case. This time it is a little difference though and has only been happening for the past 2 days. Please see attachment to see the correct way my right click options are supposed to be and they are immediately after turning the computer on in the morning. Then as soon as I open Outlook 2019 I then get what you see in the second attachment - "Open," "New," and "Print" are gone. Restarting does not bring them back but leaving the computer shutdown for sometime, (over night in all I have experimented with so far) does bring these options back until I open Outlook again.


This makes no sense to me. Hopefully someone has a suggestion to correct this situation.

Correct.jpg

Incorrect.jpg