A disappearing vertical toolbar - What?!!!

[Jay Warner]

I open Excel 2004 (version 11.0) on my Mac PowerBook running OSX
(10.4.3).
Everything looks fine. I have the formatting toolbar set on the left
and vertical.

I enter some information, and then notice that the vertical toolbar has
gone blank. Empty - a white space. When I run the cursor over the
white space, the icons in it come back as the mouse runs over them.
But I don't see them until then. They work, but I won't know which is
which until the mouse refreshes them.

If I open a new file, or an existing file, they are there. If I go
over to something else, such as this email on Safari, the toolbar goes
white again.

This happens each time I use Excel.
The horizontal toolbars are not affected.
It doesn't matter what, if anything, I put in the spread sheet.

Question:
1) Is this a bug in Excel, or in OSX 10.4?

2) Is there some (simple) way to prevent this disappearing act?

3) Is there some (complicated) way to prevent this diswappearing act?

Please answer to this group and to me, at (e-mail address removed).

I feel stupid asking what should be an obvious issue, but I don't know
where else to turn right now.

Yours,
Jay

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Question:
1) Is this a bug in Excel, or in OSX 10.4?

It's a bug in XL.

2) Is there some (simple) way to prevent this disappearing act?

This has been reported a few times before. I don't know if subsequent
updates have fixed the problem or not, since I can't reproduce the
problem (I normally never use the formatting toolbar, and I never place
a toolbar vertically, but when I test, they work fine). However, there
are *MANY* improvments in XL since 11.0 - you should apply the SP2
update, either using Microsoft AutoUpdate app, or downloading from
Mactopia

http://microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx

3) Is there some (complicated) way to prevent this diswappearing act?

Don't know of any. If it's related to a corrupt toolbar file, deleting
the Excel Toolbars (11) file from the ~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft
folder (where ~ is your home directory) may help.

 

[PhilD]

I enter some information, and then notice that the vertical toolbar has
gone blank. Empty - a white space. When I run the cursor over the
white space, the icons in it come back as the mouse runs over them.
But I don't see them until then. They work, but I won't know which is
which until the mouse refreshes them.

Isn't that a feature of the tool bar? The tool bar fades away when not
in use. There will be a little triangle at the bottom that allows you
to "un-set" the feature, or change the amount of fade, and so on.

Or is that only for certain tool bars?

I'm writing this from memory (not at my Mac) and am not an expert, so
please forgive me if this is no help at all!

PhilD

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Phil -

I believe you're thinking of the Formatting _Palette_ which does have
behaviors which toolbars do not. That was my first thought also, but I
inferred from the op (perhaps incorrectly) that Jay was aware of the
distinction between the two.

Regards |:>)

 

[PhilD]

Hi Phil -

I believe you're thinking of the Formatting _Palette_ which does have
behaviors which toolbars do not. That was my first thought also, but I
inferred from the op (perhaps incorrectly) that Jay was aware of the
distinction between the two.

Tool bar, palette, there's so many terms and names it can be quite
confusing. I stand (well, sit) corrected.

PhilD