Microsoft Excel opening a blank grey page as well as the document on double-click to open.

I have been dealing with having a blank excel and the document I opened for quite some time.  It only happened when I opened via double click on the file. Because of this, I always have two icons for excel.  Today, I was determined to solve it.   IT IS SOLVED, yippee!

I have Windows 7 and Office 2013.

Ok, here is what I did:
Excel automatically opens any files in the XLSTART folder. I went to C:\Users\(User_Name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART (replace "(User_Name)" with your user name) and deleted the files in this folder. You may want to move those files to some other location (i.e create a backup of those files and delete all files from here).

In my case I had a file in there that was corrupt "Personal.xlsb".  After deleting this file, the issue was resolved. 

If you did not find any files in that folder, verify this is the correct path for your folder.
1. Open excel
2. Click File
3. Click Options
4. Click the Advanced menu
5. Locate the General section.

Under Advanced/General, there is a box "At startup, open all files in:

Desktop Icons Disappeared

All of the desktop icons disappeared and the background image was a picture of the previous desktop.

First I must confess, this one had me stumped.  I thought this was going to be malware or something like that.    It was really just a practical joke from another person in the office.  I am not saying this couldn’t be done by a virus or other malware.  Just suggesting you check this first.

1. Right Click on the Desktop Background
2. Mouse-Over “View”
3. Make sure the “View Desktop Icons” is checked

As for the Background:

Windows 7
1. Right Click on the Desktop Background
2. Click “Personalization”
3. Then click “Desktop Background”
4. Click the picture or color you want for your desktop background
5. Under “How should the picture be positioned”, choose to have the picture fit the screen, tile, or be centered on the screen, and then click “OK”

XP
1. Right Click on the Desktop Background
2. Click on “Properties”
3. Click “Desktop” at the top
4. Then choose a picture or click “Browse” to select your own, You can also select “None” and choose a color
5. Choose Position
6. Click OK

0x8004010F: Outlook data file cannot be accessed.

Today I moved my .PST files and this is the error I received:


"0x8004010F: Outlook data file cannot be accessed"
or
"0x8004010F: The operation failed. An object could not be found"


Most of the forums I found suggest creating a new profile, this was not good news for me because I have 5 different email accounts in outlook. This is what fixed it for me:

1. From Outlook 2010 click File>Account Settings>Account Settings
2. Click Change Folder
3. Click New Outlook Data File (This is just temporary)
4. Give it a name (I used "Test")
5. Click the + to the left of the folder name to expand the subfolders. Click Inbox. Click OK.
6. Then Click Change Folder
7. Click Select the one you want
8. Click the + to the left of the folder name to expand the subfolders. Click Inbox. Click OK.
9. Close Account Settings and click send/receive.

Adobe X not opening PDF in IE8 window

A customer recently asked for help with an issue involving the new Adobe X Reader and Internet Explorer 8.  In some web sites with scripting opening a pdf in a new window, the window would remain blank and eventually give an error.
It seemed as though it would only open correctly once per reboot.  This was extremely frustrating for the customer.

With a little research and testing, we were able to fix the issue by doing the following:

1. Open Adobe Reader X.
2. Press "Ctrl K"
3. Select General Category from the left pane
4. Uncheck the "Enable Protected Mode at Startup" checkbox
5. Click on "Internet" in the left pane
6. Uncheck everything in the window except "Display PDF in browser"
7. Press "OK"
8. Close Adobe X and try to open the document again.

It may not be necessary to uncheck all of these items but this is what we did and it resolved the issue.
I hope this can help someone else save some time.

I should add, another customer mentioned having this same issue 3 days after finding this solution. He was very happy to know there was a simple fix to the problem.