Sometimes you may have to install a new Microsoft office when there is another version of it is already installed. For example you may have a MS Office 2013 installed, then for some reason you are installing MS Office 2016 version.

Up to this point everything works just fine. But when I decided to uninstall 2013, all file association was gone with it.

i.e; all “.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx” files will not open automatically on their respective applications.

In such cases we will need to re-associate those files extensions’ with MS-Office.

Right click on an office file. For example “example.doc” then go to properties.
In the general tab their is an option called “open with”. Click the “change” button beside it. Navigate to

C:\Program files\Microsoft Office\root\office16\

This is the installation directory of you MS-Office. We will find all of the installed components such as excel,word, outlook etc.
in our case we will just select “word.exe”. then click “ok”.

The file extension .doc is now connected to word.exe.

After doing the above, word.exe is recognized as a desktop app. That is, if you want to associate word with any other file type you don’t need to go to the directory. Just go to file properties and click “change” you will see “word” already displayed in the given list.

do the same steps for excel as well.

EASY SOLUTION

File associations in windows are stored in the Registry, which is a database of programs and the file types that they may be used to open. All files that can be opened using Microsoft Office applications are automatically associated with the proper office program when you install Microsoft Office. If you’d like to re-associate Office files with the proper Office program, then you only need to issue a few simple run commands.

Click window key + R on the keyboard to open the RUN command box. Then run following commands to re-associate each app to its file extensions.

winword /regserver
excel /regserver
powerpnt /regserver
msaccess /regserver