Browse button in MS Access 2016 not working

Question

I am experiencing problems with the Browse button in MS Access 2016. The button no longer brings up the file selection window - it does nothing. There are several places in Access that provide the browse button functionality, none of them seem to work (see images below). I have attempted a full repair of Office 2016 and this did not resolve the problem. The browse functionality worked until recently. Curiously, when I use the browse button in the Open option, I get an error message saying "Microsoft does not support

opening HTML pages" (see image below).  There are no active or inactive add-ins. I am running Windows 10 - 64 bit. Any help would be appreciated. 

Answer 1

Can you open the Windows File Explorer? That's all the Browse buttons do - the basically "shell" out to open the Windows File Explorer.

If you CAN open the WFE outside of Access, then I'd have to suspect you have a corrupt installation of Office. You've already tried a Repair of that installation, so you may need a full uninstall-reinstall. 

Before doing any of that, however, make sure that your Office and Windows installations are fully up to date.

Answer 2

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your reply.

WFE opens outside of Access correctly. I have also checked Excel, PowerPoint and Word: the browse buttons in these apps works correctly. Before posting this issue, the office repair actually failed and I performed an uninstall and a full reinstall. Windows and Office are up to date as far as I can tell. The problem has not been fixed. The fact that the browse button in Access shows it is trying to open html pages might point to a resolution to this problem (see image in initial post). I first noticed this problem when I was trying to use the VBA code to open the windows file explorer: Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker)

Anything other suggestions?

Thanks,

Charles

Answer 3

If the other Office products work for the Browse button, then you're (unfortunately) left with an issue with your Access application.

When you did the uninstall/reinstall, how did you uninstall? If you use the Add/Remove Programs applet, then you may not have gone "deep" enough in the uninstall, and may need to do it manually. See the "Uninstall Manually" section at this link:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Uninstall-Office-2013-Office-2016-or-Office-365-from-a-Windows-computer-9dd49b83-264a-477a-8fcc-2fdf5dbf61d8

Answer 4

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your reply.

I have followed the instructions outlined in the link you provided (For Office 2016). In step 2, there were 2 tasks that were not found (the last 2 in the list). In Step 3, there were 2 processes that were not found: OfficeC2RClient.exe and Setpup*.exe. In Step 5, I needed to reboot 3 times to completely eliminate all the office files. In step 6, there was no key in Office Key in HKEY_LOCAL_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office. I rebooted after the full uninstall and then installed Office 2016. I performed a reboot after the installation of Office and the same problem is still present. I performed the above install and reinstall twice with no improvement.

I am still getting the "Microsoft Access does not support opening HTML files" error message when I use the browse button or the Documents folder (see image). As mentioned in an earlier post, I need to get this working so I can use the VBA code to open the windows file explorer: Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker) from within an Access application. Should I consider moving back to Office 2013?

In addition, I have found that the Link table manager does not open the window file explorer when you select always prompt for new location.

Anything other suggestions?

Thanks,

Charles

Answer 5

Hi all,

I have uninstalled Office 2016 and installed Office 2013 to see if this problem would be resolved. It did not I still cannot browse within Microsoft Access. Do I need to reinstall from scratch Windows 2010?

Thanks,

Charles