Excel 2004 Highlight colour; and, placement of Help window

[jwb]

I have Office 2004, including Excel 11.3.3, on a B/W G3 PPC with G4
600 MHz Daystar CPU and also on a 15-in, 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4. Both
have system 10.4.9.

On the G3 when I select a range of cells the highlight colour is a
middle gray, not the pink colour I have set in Appearances of System
Preferences. I can't find any Excel preference for setting the
highlight colour.

Also, when the Help window opens, the top of the window is hidden
behind the menus (not a toolbar). I can resize the window by dragging
the lower right-hand corner of the window but I can't access the close
button or move the window by dragging its top bar. Those parts are
hidden behind the menus. The only way to close the Help window is by
Cmnd-W which has to be done twice. The first time closes the active
workbook and the second time closes the Help window.

On the PowerBook all is as it should be. The highlight colour is the
same as that set in the Appearence preference and the top bar of the
Help window is accessible.

Would reinstalling Office 2004/Excel on the G3 fix these anomalies or
is there some file that could be deleted to fix these anomalies?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Would reinstalling Office 2004/Excel on the G3 fix these anomalies or
is there some file that could be deleted to fix these anomalies?

No idea why the G3 doesn't reflect the Appearances setting - that's the
only place XL04 takes its highlight color from.

While it is *possible* that reinstalling Office would fix the anomalies,
in practice, it almost never works - Mac applications just don't corrupt
very frequently and reinstalling doesn't affect preferences, which do
corrupt from time to time. If you ever do reinstall, make sure you
uninstall by running the Remove Office application.

Does the highlight color in Word on the G3 show the same behavior? If
so, you may just want to blow away all the preferences, which are
located in the

~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft-

folder. Rename the folder (with ALL Office apps closed) and restart XL
to recreate the prefs. This will reset where the Help window opens, too.

If you want to be less drastic, try deleting the

com.microsoft.Excel.prefs.plist

and

com.microsoft.Office.prefs.plist

files in the above folder.

 

[jwb]

(snip)
If you want to be less drastic, try deleting the

com.microsoft.Excel.prefs.plist

and

com.microsoft.Office.prefs.plist

files in the above folder.

The highlighting issue was unique to Excel and was corrected by
deleting its preference file, as you suggested. The Help file issue
was common to all the Office applications and was corrected by
deleting the Office preferences file.

Thanks very much for the prompt and accurate advice.