How to stop IE from opening up Office docs inline

By default, when you click on a link to an Office doc (such as on a sharepoint site), IE will open the doc in-frame. For just viewing docs this is usually OK, but it can get annoying as not all features work in this manner. So if you'd rather have IE just open the doc in the appropriate application, follow the instructions in this KB:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Go to Tools | Folder Options | File Types
3. Select the appropriate file type like XLS/DOC/PPT and click Advanced
4. Uncheck "Browse in same window" and OK out of all dialogs

Ahhhhh. Much better. I didn't realize that was annoying me until I read about how to turn it off.

Many thanks to Patrick for passing along this tip on his internal blog (yes, we have internal blogs here at Microsoft); it's such a great tip, I wanted to make sure it was blogged externally.

[Update 9/12: Greg shares how to make PDF files open in Reader and not in the browser]

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  I know we've had this issue with our company intranet Thanks KC, I have been looking for this since I rebuilt my desktop! Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/kclemson/archive/2004/09/08/227202.aspx and based on http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;162059 To configure Internet Explorer to open Office files in the appropriate...
• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  and thanks to you too.
  
  I've been meaning to add this to the WSS FAQ for quite some time but never got round to it.
  
  Now it's there (III.92)
• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  Whenever I install Acrobat Reader, the first thing I do afterwards is to disable opening PDF's inline.
• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  Thankyou!
• Anonymous
  September 12, 2004
  Automated:
  
  http://www.shahine.com/omar/PermaLink,guid,b6d6cdba-4b86-439a-a373-8a1cb8a58bca.aspx