I deal with this one, time and time again, within the Help Desk. What causes it to trigger, I’m not certain. But one day, when trying to open Excel 2007 XLS documents, I come to the error message that says “There was a problem sending the command to the program.” If this happens to you, the solution is typically quick and easy. I have yet to see it in Excel 2010, but the solution is most likely the same. When greeted with “There was a problem sending the command to the program here’s what you do:
- Click on the Office Button (in the upper left, where the File Menu was in Office XP and is in Office 2010).
- Click Excel Options at the bottom.
- Click Advanced on the left.
- Scroll all the way down and look for the longest option, named “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).”
- UNCHECK that box.
That’s it! Exit Excel 2007 and test it! This should be the solution to your error “problem sending the command” error.