Glitches with Excel in Leopard

[carlos]

I AM TRYING TO GRAPH IN EXCEL (LEOPARD) AND AM HAVING TROUble
1 can't insert a series as an X axis (eg dates)
2 i can only get 2 y axes on a line chart not a column and then i lose the X axis altogether

any suggestions

 

[Matt Monday]

I am not sure if this is a glitch or if I am just doing something wrong, but the process seems so straight forward, it is hard for me to see what else I should try.

PROBLEM: I tried to input new data (a new column of numbers) into a chart by going to Chart > Add Data.. I then highlight the new column and click add.

The Y values indicate that the data has been included, however the chart does not display the new numbers.

Am I missing a step?

Just so you know, my chart is set up with days as the X axis and the series come from numbers on a sheet that are laid out horizontally.

 

[Bob Cartwright]

Excel in Leopard quits unexpectedly, screen goes blue and all data is lost. Have tried to have fixed my Mac Experts but nothing works. HELP !!!. No one seems to know what to do. :angry:

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Excel in Leopard quits unexpectedly, screen goes blue and all data is lost. Have tried to have fixed my Mac Experts but nothing works. HELP !!!. No one seems to know what to do. :angry:

Hi Bob,

When does this happen? Is it when you are trying to open a specific
file? Is it every time you try to open Excel? Are you using Excel v.x,
2004, or 2008? Have you updated office?

Please respond with more information.

Thanks.

-Jim

 

[Hardy]

I have the same issue with the keyboard freeze (using Leopard 10.5.2 and Excel 2004).
Is there any solution, yet?

And the 2008 version really is a piece of crap (sorry to be so harsh). Not that it is even slower than Excel 2004, there is no option to use customized x-values nor customized error-bars.
This version as it is now is absolutely useless. I just can't believe that MS is not able do deliver a working and fully functional spreadsheet application for Mac.

 

[jetlag11]

As I posted a while back, I had serious problems with keyboards and Excel 2004 and Leopard.

Thanks to the posters here, and my own digging, I was able to fix most of the problems by discarding the Excel preferences.

Still remaining were the keyboard entry freeze. After I enter a variable amount of cell input through the keyboard, the keyboard refuses to accept any more. However, when I mouse over to the menu & do a save-using the mouse-the keyboard frees up for a little while. Then I have to repeat the process. It's sort of been integrated into my work routine.

However, I think I've found a connection between the number of open toolbars and the length of time before freezes. Closing two toolbars means I can now enter a transaction or two without the keyboard freezing. And so far, the only freezes I've encountered lately have been on file commands.

The problem is almost as if the keyboard and the toolbars are sharing the same buffer, which is too small to begin with. But what do I know?

 

[Stevpla]

After reading multiple posts about the keyboard/Excel 2004 problem I am amazed neither Apple or Microsoft has come up with a solution to this. I have multiple computers here at work that have the same problem. Excel 2004 was fine under 10.4, but under 10.5(.0, .1, & .2) it has this problem everyone is describing about the keyboard freezing up. There doesn't even seem to be any rational suggestions of what to try to possibly fix this. Fortunately Excel 2008 does have the ability to set the default save format as XLS instead of the XLSX XLM format, but it obviously costs a lot of money to upgrade multiple computers. I won't even get into Excel 2008 crashes, crappy implementation, lack of features (compared to Excel 2007 PC), etc.

 

[Fern Gale Estrow]

I have just purchased a new MACbook Pro and 2008 student/teacher office pack...I do a lot of updating on a spreadsheet and one column which is designated for "text" is indicating "The value to be entered must be a date between 1/2/1994 and 1/1/2055. In addition text is not being reflected in the spreadsheet when noted as wrap unless I click on the cell. I don't own 2004 -if anyone has suggestions I would appreciate but also entering notes here for flag of MS staff monitoring - needless to say I am not happy. It has been a long time since I have worked on MAC - what other option do I have besides MS?

 

[Thomas Correa]

I too have having an extremely annoying issue w/ Excel 2004 keyboard input occasionally, sometimes frequently freezing up when I try to type in a cell. It often happens after typing the first character in a cell successfully. I really haven't been able to find much regularity to it. The mouse continues to work fine. I can click around a bit and then the keyboard often continues to work again. I had the problem trying to open a password protected Excel file once, but after much clicking about I was able to get the password typed into the password box finally. I'll try the save button as suggested by others next. No problem w/ other applications. I'm on 10.5.2. Macbook Pro. 2GB RAM. My coworker has similar problem as well with Excel 2004 running on 10.5.2 but a newer Macbook Pro. I also skimmed Apple support and discussions. No solution there either, but I can see others with this issue there too. I can't upgrade to office 2008 since some of the spreadsheets I use require Macros. I hope Apple & Microsoft come up with a fix for this issue soon.

 

[Pat McMillan]

We are looking into this problem, but unfortunately don't have any
resolution yet. Is there anything unique about your configuration when you
encounter this? Do you have other applications running, or just Excel?

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

@ Fern Gale Estrow

openoffice dot org.

If you can stand a bit of a different interface, it is completely compatible with M$ products, however there are some formatting issues, but I have found that those are when opening a spreadsheet created in M$ excel.

Hi,

I wish to challenge your assertion that OpenOffice is "completely
compatible with M$ products..." It's just not true. You won't make Mac
users happy by overselling open source products.

There's plenty to frustrate an advanced Excel user in OpenOffice, so
please stop exaggerating OO's capabilities.

Let's be honest and say that up to a point, OpenOffice and NeoOffice are
compatible with Microsoft products. OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are
different suites offering different components. The object models are
not identical, so right away there are incompatibilities.

Many of the differences are not trivial.

For example: VBA in OpenOffice 2.3.1 (the current shipping version) just
does not work at all in Leopard. You can point OO to the Java Runtime
Environment that ships with Leopard and it will refuse to recognize it.
So, like Office 2008, VBA is completely broken, MIA, non-functional.

VBA in OO applies only to Calc (the spreadsheet). There's no VBA at all
for word processing or presentations. If you thought Office 2004's VBA
editor was rudimentary, wait until you see the OO VBA editor. There's no
Object browser. You still need Microsoft Office 2004 to build your VBA
code and then try it out in OO. It will need a lot of tweaking.

VBA in NeoOffice 2.2.2, which is an earlier version of OpenOffice
recompiled in an Aqua interface, DOES support VBA on the Mac. (When I
refer to OO, I'm referring to both OpenOffice and NeoOffice and use the
terms interchangeably). NeoOffice DOES recognize the JRE. There's a huge
BUT, however. VBA in all of OpenOffice is only partially implemented. No
UserForms. Many commands do not work. It will be years before VBA in OO
is robust, and because of object model differences some VBA commands
will never work in OO.

Using SQL in Excel vs Calc (the OpenOffice spreadsheet program) is quite
different. Excel has a true SQL GUI. OO does not (if it does, I haven't
found it yet). I was able to work my way through using ODBC and MS Query
in Microsoft Office. I'm no dummy but I still have not figured out the
OO way to do it.

I am not trying to trash OpenOffice here, just the notion that it is a
perfect substitute for Microsoft Office.

So if OO is not completely compatible with Microsoft Office, how
compatible is it?

My opinion is that it is "pretty good" overall. Focusing on Calc, almost
every Excel function is implemented. OO looks and acts like Excel much
of the time.

OpenOffice ODF (Open Document Format) is inefficient. Yesterday I zipped
a Microsoft Word document in .doc format and it was 14k. The same
document zipped in ODF was 148k - more than 10 times larger. The Open
Source crowd is still pushing for this file format. Yuk IMHO. But OO
does a very nice job of saving to .doc format, so I have no problem
ignoring ODF most of the time.

Until Office 2008 was released I could rely on Microsoft Office to
support VBA macros and add-ins. Now I can't. To me, the value of
NeoOffice is that it gives me an alternative way to create and
distribute cross-platform applications for Macs and Windows. But I don't
think OO is as good as Microsoft Office 2004.

For my money, Microsoft Office 2004 is what stays on my Mac. It's where
I "live" most of the time. I have NeoOffice so I can open the occasional
Office 2007/2008 documents that come my way, and so I can distribute
applications with VBA for both Macs and Windows.

-Jim

 

[Bob Cartwright]

> Excel in Leopard quits unexpectedly, screen goes blue and all data is lost. Have tried to have fixed my Mac Experts but nothing works. HELP !!!. No one seems to know what to do. :angry:

Hi Bob,

When does this happen? Is it when you are trying to open a specific
file? Is it every time you try to open Excel? Are you using Excel v.x,
2004, or 2008? Have you updated office?

Please respond with more information.

Thanks.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are independent experts who are not affiliated with Microsoft.
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/>

There is no definite time that this happens. Totally random. It does not happen every time. Usually OK to open Excel, but once starting to work, happens most times. Using Excel 2004 and have updated office. Took into the "Genius" bar twice and they have done nothing to repair.

Thanks Bob

 

[Chris Bailey]

I had this same problem with Excel 2004 when using 10.5 on Intel
hardware, but only when using an external USB keyboard (not my MacBook
Pro's internal keyboard). Upgrading to Excel 2008 has completely cured
this.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

There is no definite time that this happens. Totally random. It does not happen every time. Usually OK to open Excel, but once starting to work, happens most times. Using Excel 2004 and have updated office. Took into the "Genius" bar twice and they have done nothing to repair.

Thanks Bob

Hi again,

OK - next step.

Do the things listed on this URL after running Alsoft DiskWarrior on
your computer:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/office/troubleshooting.html

I know it says for v.X but the same things apply to 2004.

-Jim

 

[Greg_Thener]

I have found every time I try to maximize an Excel file originally created with Excel for Windows my entire Macbook Pro locks up. My system & software are only weeks old and I've downloaded/installed the latest Office 2008 upgrades which, I thought, was supposed to address the application's freezing.

My only solution thus far is to force my MBP to reboot by holding down the o/f button.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.
Greg

 

[Pat McMillan]

We are aware of this, and think it may be an Apple bug. Please see this
thread: http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/822.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[TryingToUseOfficeOnMyMac]

I find Excel in Leopard very unstable. This afternoon I have had two crashes. The first was when I was editing a formula to add the "$" signs so the cell references wouldn't change as I copied, and the second was as I was trying to do as "sumif" without using the "helpful" fill-in box on the right, just typing it in the (inconvenient to access) formula bar. I both cases Excel was trying to insert a "+" followed by a cell reference.

Does the new Excel work reliably with Leopard? This is only the beginning of the problems I have been having.

Ed

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I find Excel in Leopard very unstable. This afternoon I have had two crashes.
The first was when I was editing a formula to add the "$" signs so the cell
references wouldn't change as I copied, and the second was as I was trying to
do as "sumif" without using the "helpful" fill-in box on the right, just
typing it in the (inconvenient to access) formula bar. I both cases Excel was
trying to insert a "+" followed by a cell reference.

Does the new Excel work reliably with Leopard? This is only the beginning of
the problems I have been having.

Ed

For What it's Worth, I have been using Excel 2008 with OS 10.5.2 with NONE
of the problems being reported here. I have been trying diligently to
determine why (or how) my configuration my be different from others, and can
not arrive at anything consistent. So, rest assured, Excel does indeed work
properly and reliably. I am certain that Microsoft is scrambling to find out
what is causing the reported problems, and will be issuing and update just
as soon as they can be sure it really fixes the issues and does not cause
any others.

 

[msafar]

Excel freezes rock solid on me. I can do nothing but reboot. I've not figured out the pattern yet. I'm switching to numbers, or using Parallels until this is fixed.

Apparently, not even Mac OS X kernel can save Microsoft. I've never had ANY product on my mac freeze the machine so badly that I had to reboot (only the mouse would work). Beachball of death.

 

[Darlene Riordan]

I have a spreadsheet in Excel that has worked perfectly until Leopard. It has changed the widths of my columns and now I get xxxxx instead of numbers. I no longer get the arrows I use to get to enable me to alter column widths to suit my data. HELP!