Experiencing this same issue but with your OneDrive files? Take a look at our blog post documenting how to change the opening behavior of your files in OneDrive. Follow the simple steps and you’ll never run into this problem again. https://www.syvantis.com/blog/onedrive-opening-online

The default, out-of-the-box version of Microsoft SharePoint prefers to open Microsoft 365 app files in the web browser editor instead of desktop applications. This editor is fine for getting a quick preview of the file and maybe some minor editing adjustments, but it does not accurately display file formatting and lacks the full capabilities of traditional Office desktop applications. You can open the files in the desktop app from the web browser, but it can be an annoying extra few clicks.

Luckily, there is a simple solution to change the default opening behavior.

Change the default open behavior for Office documents for all users

You will need to be a site administrator to make the change as this takes effect for all users.

To start, make sure that you are on the top-level site for this site collection.

Click the gear in the upper right-hand corner of SharePoint and select Site Settings. From the Site Settings page, under the Site Collection Administration section, click on Site collection features.

About halfway down the page, you will see an option called Open Documents in Client Applications by Default. Out-of-the-box, this setting will be inactive. To activate the feature, which will configure SharePoint links to open in client applications instead of web applications, you will simply hit the Activate button. It will take a moment to complete the activation. You will know that the activation process is complete once the Activate button is replaced with a Deactivate button and a blue Active button appears, as shown below.

And that’s it – you’ve turned on the setting for the entire organization.

This setting does not affect documents appearing in search results. Even if you configure SharePoint to open documents in client applications by default, it will not change the default open behavior when someone searches for a document and attempts to open it from the search results.