Last Thursday afternoon my win 7 pc had a very long update, on Friday all my excel icons had changed to a weird orange color. Poking around I found that office 12 was downloaded on my drive. I currently use excel 2002 because it does every thing I need it do. Is there any way to get my old green file icons back? Anyway to get critical updates but keep microsoft from down loading large files that I do not use? Sorry to be such a dinosaur. Thanks.
Same thing happened to me - and it also told me that I could no longer access the files (Word files) because I had to re-authenticate my copy of MS Word. Problem is, this was pre-loaded software, and I don’t have the authentication key anymore…
Sorry I don’t have an answer for you, just another question!
Go to Control Panel, Programs and Features, and uninstall Office 12.
Just don’t uninstall the version of Office that you actually use.
Office 12 (aka Office 2007) does not use orange for it’s Excel icons. As far as I can tell all recent versions use a green color scheme, orange for Powerpoint. Can you post an example?
I doubt Microsoft gave a free update. Are you sure they aren’t the compatibility files for .xlsx, .docx, etc.? This is a good thing.
If you go to Control Panel > Default Programs > Set Associations and scroll to Excel, are all the icons for it orange? It makes me think something in yours got corrupted.
The orange icons are for Office Starter, a stripped-down ad-supported version which was pre-installed on a lot of computers (though Microsoft is now phasing it out).
If you have another version of Office installed, like robz, then you can either uninstall Office Starter or change the file associations back to the correct version.
If, like Uber_the_Goober, you only use Office Starter, then go to Programs and Features and uninstall any other versions of Office which show up in the list.
I uninstalled Office 10. Office 12 did not show up in control panel, but when I go to start, computer, c:, program files (x86), microsoft office, there is a folder for office 12 that was created 9/12/13.
Anyway, uninstalling office 10 worked, I rebooted and all my excel files returned to normal.
There is still a folder for office 10 and office 12 on the drive, both with all kinds of files. Weird.
Thank you all for the help.