Windows – How to open xlsx files with Excel 2013 by default on windows 8

Just add this line to your batch file:

• START "name of spreadsheet.xls"

This will use the default file association to open the file. If you need a specific version though, then you'll need to find the appropriate .EXE file which might be under a sub-directory called "Common" or "Common files" which should be somewhere under "C:/Program Files/" or "C:/Program Files (x86)/" (stuff is often scattered between both of these as applications are slowly transitioning from 32-bit to 64-bit).

Depending on the default file assocation will ensure that your batch file is portable, so you should prefer to use this approach if you can.

Found the problem while digging around in my registry.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\EXCEL.EXE\shell\open\command 

was still pointing at the location of Excel 2007. Apparently the upgrade didn't update this?

Changing this to point at the location of Excel 2010 made it so that Excel would show up in the Open With dialog after I browsed to the EXE, so I could associate the file type and now it correctly opens and auto-formats!