Excel 2003 Custom toolbar problem saving new buttons

[Karen O]

In Excel 2003 I want to customize my toolbar but the buttons don't stay for
the next time I access the program - I have to recustomize each time! I go
into View and add new buttons to the toolbar, or I click on the toolbar and
say to add butotns. Either way, when I come back into the program, the
buttons are not there anymore. Very frustrating. I would appreciate any
help from anyone out there!

 

[Gord Dibben]

I assume you are adding buttons from Tools>Customize>Commands

Excel stores Toolbar and Menu customizations in a file named Excel11.xlb.

Perhaps you do not have permissions to save to that file.

Close Excel.

Find that file and re-name to Excel11.OLD

Common path to Excel11.xlb is

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

Fire up Excel and and make some changes then close out.

Re-start Excel

Are your changes saved?


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Dave Peterson]

Just to add to Gord's response...

I bet you have multiple versions of that *.xlb file. You modify one of the
versions, but each time you open excel, the unchanged version gets opened last.
(You may even see your modifications disappear if you watch closely.)

Follow Gord's instructions and move all those *.xlb files to a safe location (or
delete them).

Then try changing it once more.

ps. When you've got it working perfectly, find that *.xlb file and put a copy
in a nice safe location. You'll be happy you did when you destroy your
toolbar--either by testing or by accident.

You'll be able to just copy that backup version into the real folder and your
customized toolbars will be back.

 

[Karen O]

I did what you suggested, and the changes, which were just to add a couple
tools to the toolbar, were there when I exited Excel and started it back up,
but when I log off and back on, the changes are not there.

 

[Karen O]

I did what you suggested, and the changes, which were just to add a couple
tools to the toolbar, were there when I exited Excel and started it back up,
but when I log off and back on, the changes are not there.

 

[Karen O]

I did what you suggested, and the changes, which were just to add a couple
tools to the toolbar, were there when I exited Excel and started it back up,
but when I log off and back on, the changes are not there. The date on the
old file is the same as the one that is there when starting back up. So it
is not really saving the previous file.

 

[Dave Peterson]

It could be that you don't have write access to that file, but I bet that's not
the problem.

I bet the problem is that you didn't find all the toolbars.

If you can't find your files using windows start button|Search, then you could
use an old DOS command to search and delete/move them

Windows Start button|Run
type:
CMD
(to get to the Command prompt)

C:
(to get to the C: drive--change this to the drive that excel is installed on)

cd\
(to get to the root directory)

dir *.xlb /s

The /s says to search subfolders, too.

Make a note of the locations of the found files.

And delete/move them.