The first error was shown when the excel spreadsheet was being displayed in the browser and you clicked on the Open In Excel button.

“To open this workbook, your computer must have a version of Microsoft Excel installed and your web browser must support opening files directly from Excel in the browser.”

The second error was seen when trying to Open in Excel from the Document Library view.

“The document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible application could not be found to edit the document.”

Solution

The answer to the problem was that they were using some sort of quick launch application which was always executing the 64 bit version of IE and switching to the 32 bit version worked.

Disable IE8 enhanced security on Windows Server 2008

Having managed to resolve my Win2k8 0×8007232B activation error I wanted to download some software from CodePlex to my new SharePoint development server but the download link would not work as it kept getting blocked by IE8.

In other versions of Windows you could remove the Enhanced Security through add/remove programs in the control panel but not on Win2k8.

I eventually tracked it down to the Configure IE ESC option in the Security Information section of Server Manager. Restarted IE and everything was as I needed.