I'm not sure it's "fixed" in the usual sense, but it works with the initializer. (I tested .output, .once, and .excel with combinations of options and named FILE.) For grins, I tested with and without bOnce initialized to zero. It seems to work the same way, regardless. I would have to run it under a debugger to see why, but it seems not worth the bother. (The behavior is undefined, after all.) While testing I noticed something contrary to expectation. The help for .once suggests that, if a FILE is named, that's were the re-routed output will go. But with the -x option given, a tempfile is created regardless. (I discovered this because I forgot what names I had used, and went to see what got written. Only then did I see that when Excel opens, the title bar shows one of the bizarre filenames that gets generated for tempfiles.) I suppose a separate report on that would be appropriate.