Excel 2004 for Mac freezes if I enable "drawing" toolbar

[KevinW]

I'm trying to label some plots for my thesis using the arrows and text
boxes that are available on the "Drawing" toolbar.

However, whenever I try and turn this toolbar on, either by using the
'view - toolbars' menu or by selecting 'customize toolbars/settings', I
get the dreaded spinning beach-ball of death (Excel freezes). Eventually
I have force-quit.

I've tried uninstalling Mac Excel Expander which I've been using, and
even reinstalled MS office entirely using only what comes on the
install disks, but nothing seems to work.

Has anyone else seen this issue? Is this a known bug? Any solutions?

I have one possible work-around. It looks like I am able to select
individual buttons from the 'customize' menu, and I could reconstruct a
'drawing' menu by tacking the individual buttons onto an existing
toolbar. This is a pain since there are alot of drawing items I need.

I'm using Excel 2004 For Mac

Any thoughts you might have would be appreciated.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[Mike Middleton]

KevinW -

Two thoughts:

(1) Fix disk permissions, and follow other troubleshooting advice at JE
McGimpsey's site:

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/office/trouble04.html

(2) Post messages in the following newsgroup:

microsoft.public.mac.office.excel

- Mike
www.mikemiddleton.com

 

[KevinW]

Thanks for the advice.

I searched the archives of the Mac forum and tried deleting my
'preferences' file for Excel.

When I restarted the program I was able to turn the drawing toolbar
on.

Thanks
Kevin