Excel 2004 for Mac drawing tool

[Dennis]

Office for Mac 2004 SP2
Mac OS 10.4.3
Mac Powerbook G4

Since the latest update for Office for Mac was installed, Excel locks up
when the user selects the drawing tool. I reinstalled Office and the
updates. The drawing tool works in Word, but not Excel. Has anyone had this
problem or know how to fix it?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Reinstalling is rarely, if ever a solution for a Mac application problem
(it doesn't always work for Windows apps, either, but it's the easiest
thing that tech support can suggest, and it keeps you out of their hair
for a while). If one DOES want to reinstall MacOffice, the Remove Office
application (on the install disk) should be run.

Not sure what you mean by "drawing tool" - do you mean the Drawing
Toolbar? or a particular control on that toolbar?

In either case, the most likely problem is a corrupt preference file.

With Office apps closed (or else they'll write the bad info back into
the prefs files), try deleting these files (where ~ is your home
directory):

~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft:com.microsoft.Excel.prefs.plist
~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft:Excel Toolbars (11)
~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft:com.microsoft.Office.prefs.plist

Note that while you're welcome to post here, there is a separate
newsgroup for Mac-XL specific questions:

microsoft.public.mac.office.excel

 

[Dennis]

Thank you for your response. I know very little about how the Mac OS and
programs operate. The drawing tool is under the View menu --> Toolbars -->
Drawing tool.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

The suggestions I made should clear the problem up - did you try them?

 

[Dennis]

I will be trying them on Monday. The user is out of town with the laptop.