How to enable automatic opening of Office documents from SharePoint for Chrome, I.E. & FireFox

And you may ask yourself...

Why am I unable to open documents in SharePoint?  
I see this browser message when trying to open Office documents from SharePoint...

Others in my organization can view files without issue, but some cannot. And I certainly do have Excel!

Well, the first part of the pop up message is true, you do have a version of Excel installed.

The reason you are seeing this is because second part of the message is false for you; your browser is misconfigured! You will need to enable two Browser Helper Objects in Internet Explorer, or use an AddOn for Chrome or FireFox.

How to enable automatic opening of Office documents from SharePoint for Chrome, IE & FireFox.

Instructions for Internet Explorer:

1. Open Internet Explore open the Tools menu by click Alt-T (or click the gear icon)
2. Choose Internet Options (or press o)
3. Choose the Programs Tab
4. Click the Manage add-ons button
5. Scroll to the Microsoft Corporation section
6. Highlight SharePoint OpenDocuments Class and assure it is enabled.
7. Highlight the Office Document Cache Handler and assure it is enabled
8. Click Close
9. Refresh your webpage and you will now be able to open documents in your full MSOffice rich client application from within SharePoint when prompted.

Instructions for Chrome:

You will need to install the add-on IETab

1. Get the Add On by searching add-ons for IETab, or here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ie-tab/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd?hl=en
2. Click Add To Chrome
3. A new IE folder icon will appear at the end of the URL address area in the browser

Instructions for FireFox:

Similar to Chrome IE-Tab, you will need to install the Add-On IE-TAB https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ie-tab/