[ashwken]

Running UR Pro 3.5e, Excel 2003 SP-3

Appears to depend on whether or not the stored file is being displayed in the Detail Pane, which as Kinook mentioned "it's actually Excel (the instance hosted within UR) that is preventing the external Excel instance from getting focus/loading the file".

Select the Stored Excel Item and it opens in the UR detail Pane, with focus on the item in the Data Explorer do a Ctrl-J to open the file externally. The Excel file opens externally in Excel as expected, close Excel.

Now back in UR the Stored Excel Item is still selected in the Data Explorer, but the Detail Pane is showing the three choices for editing the file. From Windows Explorer I can launch an Excel file.

Course, as soon as you move focus off the Item, and come back it's displayed in the Detail Pane and you're back to square one.

You could remove the following reference (.xls) from Tools | Options | Browser - File extensions to display in internal browser view, and resign yourself to opening the Excel file via Ctrl-J.

Course the text contents of the spreadsheet are still going to display in the Detail Pane and can be a bit disconcerting, but they are not editable, regardless of the settings found in Tools | Options | Document - File extensions to open stored document writable.

None of which is a solution, simply what I've found.

edit: spelling