Corrupted comment-->Hard crash

[asjk]

I recently edited a worksheet in my workbook. I added some rows across
the entire sheet and moved and deleted other rows in a similar manner.
I saved a copy prior to this activity. When I opened the workbook the
next time I noted that Excel did a hard crash (generating a report
that I gave an OK to send to MS).

The crash occurred when I hovered my mouse above certain comments.

The first thing I noticed was the these comments had no arrow showing
the cell being commented on. Then I noted that the comments affected
were all displaced. They seemed to have involved rows over which I had
done the original changes mentioned above.
My solution was the copy old comment to their correct positions using
the workbook copy and deleting the corrupted comment.

Excel 2004. Version 11.3.7 (070724)
Power Mac G4 (processor card upgrade)
Origianl Machine Model: PowerMac digital audio
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.47 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 2 MB
Memory: 896 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.8f1
FileVault operation. Used exclusively for financial work. No dicey
kexts, etc.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

The first thing I noticed was the these comments had no arrow showing
the cell being commented on. Then I noted that the comments affected
were all displaced. They seemed to have involved rows over which I had
done the original changes mentioned above.
My solution was the copy old comment to their correct positions using
the workbook copy and deleting the corrupted comment.

Sounds like you did exactly what I would have done - your symptoms are
classic signs of a corrupt workbook. In addition to keeping regular
backups, you might consider copying the worksheet(s) to a fresh workbook
(via CMD-c, not Edit/Move or Copy...).

Fortunately the move to the new XL2007/2008 XML file format *should*
eliminate corrupt documents.