loosing columns in excel 2000

[Arnold]

I'm a long time Excel user & database my clients info there. During the last
week I've lost columns. The first time about eleven columns vanished, & now
another one has disappeared. I cannot attribute this to any particular
action. The first time I was hiding the columns in question to work on other
information. The hidden columns were gone. This most recent was while I was
rebuilding the missing information, saved for the day, shut down over night &
restarted the following day, a column was missing. I'm using Office 2000
Professional on a Pentium 1.4 GHz, Windows 2000 OS, saving to My Documents
under my user area (not Administrator), & am the only user, & have 785 MB
RAM, multiple hard drives, using C:\ for this, which is a 230 GB drive with
200 GB available.

 

[Gord Dibben]

Arnold

By "vanished" do you mean the data is gone?

I would suspect operator error in this case.

Do your column headers indicate A through IV or some are missing, as in
hidden?

Perhaps the column widths are just set to zero or a small number?


Gord Dibben Excel MVP

 

[Arnold]

Gord,

"vanished" means gone, not hidden, or misplaced. My immediate response to
any problem is "what did I, or whomever, do wrong?", however, data has twice
now "vanished" & I'm at a loss as to why. Column headers disappeared with the
columns in question the first time, lettered labels were consecutive, meaning
Excel's lettered column labels were correct as if the missing columns never
existed, my column headers vanished with the missing columns. The second time
an amount of information entered during yesterday's work turned up missing
today. Not the entire column, not even all of yesterday's work, just some of
it. However, my column header for that became blank. The column remains. Most
info in that column remains. Weird? By the way, saving is not the issue
either, I save roughly every five minutes or so. I'll do a bit of work &
save. I save one last time when I close the program.

Thanks for your assistance,
Arnold

 

[Gord Dibben]

Arnold

You sure you're opening the same file each time from the same folder?

I have not heard of data simply vanishing from a workbook after being saved.

File corruption, yes, but that usually affects the entire file, not just
pieces.

Has any other user(s) access to the workbook in your absence?

Is the workbook "shared"?

Where is it saved to?

How is it opened?


Gord

 

[Arnold]

Gord,

Same file, same folder, from the same desktop shortcut. The file is
definitely not corrupted. No other user, nor is it in any way shared. Saved
to C:\My Documents, etc., the "safest" folder on your machine.

Anyway, just wanted to toss out the question. My response, both immediate &
considered, is exactly the same as yours. Simply wanted to see if someone
knew of a problem with Excel which may have surfaced recently that I am not
aware of.

By the way, it's worth noting, my machine is double firewalled, router, a
home-office machine (I know I'm the only one using it), antivirus, physhing,
adware, etc., protected (& up to date).

We'll simply have to see what the next couple of days brings.

Thanks for your help & interest,
Arnold

 

[Gord Dibben]

Thanks for feedback Arnold.

Keep us posted with any updates to this phenomenon.

Gord