Excel 2004: document/workbook windows disappearing!

[uniace]

Excel 2004 (version 11.2) has just started doing something very bizarre
and very counterproductive. Whenever I copy some cells and then
deselect them (or paste some cells that I've cut), the workbook window
I'm in DISAPPEARS! It doesn't close, it doesn't get minimized, it just
becomes invisible. And if I've double-clicked in a cell to cause this,
the cell remains visible, just floating on top of the rest of the
screen. If i have other Excel documents open, they're fine, and I have
to click in one of those, then re-select the disappeared document form
the Window folder for it to reappear. Or sometimes, and especially if
there's just one Excel document opened, I have to switch to a different
application and then back to Excel to get my window back.

I now have seen the problem happen with other commands too, such as
Insert Column, and Save.
I've now also determined that the problem appears to occur only after
at least a few commands have been made. For example, after I open
Excel, the first few cut & paste commands may work, and THEN the
trouble starts.

I recently installed a number of new applications (e.g. Palm Desktop &
HotSync, SOHO Notes), so I figured they may be causing the trouble. I
restarted with no login apps running and opened Excel only. Problem
persists.

I removed the two add-in excel bits I had added. Problem persists.

I turned off iDisk syncing, which I had recently turned on. Problem
persists.

I used Cocktail to clean caches and run crons, and used Disk Utility to
repair permissions. Rebooted. Problem persists.

I used the Remove Office tool to uninstall Office 2004. Then I
reinstalled Office 2004, and installed all the updates again. Problem
persists.

I'm checking for viruses right now, but I've had Sophos Anti-virus
running the whole time.

Agh! Can anyone think of anything? This bug is keeping me from doing
my work so any help would be MUCH appreciated!

I'm on a G5 dual 2.3ghz running OS X 10.4.3 with 2gb RAM.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello-

I've noticed some similar posts in the Word & Entourage NGs... You don't
happen to be using an app called 'StickyBrain', do you?

Regards |:>)

 

[uniace]

AHA! STICKYBRAIN!!! I JUST installed that recently! Wow, thank
goodness you posted! I was about to go through another clean install
of Office that likely would have done no good. Do you know what the
specific cause and fix is? I will go looking for info, but if you have
any specific links (e.g. to other discussions of issues w/ Excel &
StickyBrain) that'd be very helpful.

I was just going to try out StickyBrain b/c an Apple Geniu in a retail
store recommended it for scrapbooking. It looks greta but I haven't
had a chance to mess with it yet. I hope there's a fix that allows me
to keep StickyBrain if I end up liking it.
At any rate, THANK YOU!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I was about to go through another clean install
of Office that likely would have done no good.

It likely wouldn't have done any good even if StickyBrain isn't the
culprit.

Reinstalling is a catch-all Windows solution that often works because
the installation changes Registry settings.

It almost never works on Macs - Applications just don't get corrupted
very easily, and reinstalling doesn't normally affect preferences, where
the corruption usually occurs.

If you ever do reinstall office, make sure you run the Remove Office
application, which does remove preferences and hidden files, first
(perhaps that's what you meant by a "clean install"). Or just remove the
preferences, which are stored in the

~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft

folder (where ~ is your home directory).

 

[uniace]

PROBLEM SOLVED! It is caused by the OpenBase Database Engine used by
StickyBrain and SOHO Notes/Organizer/etc. It appears that there is no
fix or workaround except to uninstall the applications and the database
engine. Hopefully Chronos (parent company) will fix this bizarre bug
soon.

See here:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...read/thread/f3e56b8ab5a108de/883f551854cd5cdd

 

[ScottKeith]

The problem may be some bad interaction with Stickybrain (you would
have to check with them), but there is no bad interaction with
OpenBase. We have tested it. I use Excel myself right along side
OpenBase.

Here are the things I would investigate:
#1. File corruption. It is possible that during the optimization
process that happens after installing a program it tried to fix one of
the files which excel depends on. I would recommend that you try
reinstalling excel. BTW, file corruption can also be the results of
memory problems.

#2. Memory problems. Sometimes launching more programs can reveal a
bad location in memory that you never noticed before. That could make
applications malfunction.

That is what I would check.

Best regards,

Scott Keith
OpenBase International

 

[ScottKeith]

The problem may be some bad interaction with Stickybrain (you would
have to check with them), but there is no bad interaction with
OpenBase. We have tested it. I use Excel myself right along side
OpenBase.

Here are the things I would investigate:
#1. File corruption. It is possible that during the optimization
process that happens after installing a program it tried to fix one of
the files which excel depends on. I would recommend that you try
reinstalling excel. BTW, file corruption can also be the results of
memory problems.

#2. Memory problems. Sometimes launching more programs can reveal a
bad location in memory that you never noticed before. That could make
applications malfunction.

That is what I would check.

 

[chronosjerry]

FROM CHRONOS, DEVELOPER OF STICKYBRAIN

We believe we have solved this problem. It turns out that our
contextual menu plugin that comes with StickyBrain, SOHO Notes, & SOHO
Organizer was the culprit. Our contextual menu plugin was calling a
function that invoked a call to NSWorkspace which is a Cocoa method.
When you right-click or control-click in an application like Excel, it
loads and makes calls to all the contextual menu plugins on the system
including our plugin. For some reason, calling this Cocoa method from
Carbon applications like Excel, Word, etc. sometimes causes the above
described problem. We use Excel daily at Chronos and never experienced
the problem prior to investigating these reports so we thank you for
bringing it to our attention.

The problem has now been fixed (it was a one line fix) and the fix is
available in the StickyBrain 4.0.3, SOHO Notes 5.0.3, and SOHO
Organizer 5.0.3 downloads that we quicky posted to our web site tonight
(www.chronosnet.com). Again, we thank you for bring this to our
attention and we apologize for any inconvenience it caused.

One final note we want to be clear on: the OpenBase database engine
that our products use was NOT in any way involved in this problem. It
may have appeared to be a contributing factor when one user uninstalled
StickyBrain but not OpenBase because the problem continued. It turns
out that once an application like Excel loads a contextual menu plugin,
the contextual menu plugin never gets unloaded until the application
quits or you restart your computer. This means the problem would have
persisted after uninstalling StickyBrain if Excel had not been quit. We
hope this helps explain everything. Thanks,

The Chronos Team

 

[chronosjerry]

FROM CHRONOS, DEVELOPER OF STICKYBRAIN

We believe we have solved this problem. It turns out that our
contextual menu plugin that comes with StickyBrain, SOHO Notes, & SOHO
Organizer was the culprit. Our contextual menu plugin was calling a
function that invoked a call to NSWorkspace which is a Cocoa method.
When you right-click or control-click in an application like Excel, it
loads and makes calls to all the contextual menu plugins on the system
including our plugin. For some reason, calling this Cocoa method from
Carbon applications like Excel, Word, etc. sometimes causes the above
described problem. We use Excel daily at Chronos and never experienced
the problem prior to investigating these reports so we thank you for
bringing it to our attention.

The problem has now been fixed (it was a one line fix) and the fix is
available in the StickyBrain 4.0.3, SOHO Notes 5.0.3, and SOHO
Organizer 5.0.3 downloads that we quicky posted to our web site tonight
(www.chronosnet.com). Again, we thank you for bring this to our
attention and we apologize for any inconvenience it caused.

One final note we want to be clear on: the OpenBase database engine
that our products use was NOT in any way involved in this problem. It
may have appeared to be a contributing factor when one user uninstalled
StickyBrain but not OpenBase because the problem continued. It turns
out that once an application like Excel loads a contextual menu plugin,
the contextual menu plugin never gets unloaded until the application
quits or you restart your computer. This means the problem would have
persisted after uninstalling StickyBrain if Excel had not been quit. We
hope this helps explain everything. Thanks,

The Chronos Team