Losing Customized Toolbars

[Mike O'Connor]

Excel 2000, Office 2000 Professional (SR1) running on
Windows 2000 Professional (local profile).

A user (our Financial Controller - typical!) has
customized toolbars in Excel, upon closing Excel however,
he loses the icons he has added when he next opens the
application.

Is this a problem with his PERSONAL.XLS file in the
XLSTART folder. If so, does anyone have a solution?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Controller]

What's "Typical!"

 

[Norman Harker]

Hi Mike!

Customized toolbars are saved in the Excel.xlb file. In Windows 2000
this is
located as follows:

C:\Documents and Settings\.....UserName.....\Application
Data\Microsoft\Excel

But you can find it in all systems by using:

Start > Search > For Files or Folders
Search for *.xlb

This Excel.xlb file is created by Excel when the first modification to
toolbars are made and is "personal" to the User and (I think) version
of Excel and to the computer that the file is created on. However you
can attach customized toolbars to files using:

Tools > Customize > Toolbars > Attach

--
Regards
Norman Harker MVP (Excel)
Sydney, Australia
Holidays and Observances Wednesday 16th July: Argentina (Independence
Day); Brazil (Sao Paulo State Civil Holiday); Isle of Man (Senior Race
Day); Morocco (King Hassan II's Birthday); Palau (Constitution Day).
Celebration: Baha'i (Martyrdom of the Bab).
(e-mail address removed)
Excel and Word Function Lists (Classifications, Syntax and Arguments)
available free to good homes.

 

[Norman Harker]

Hi Mike!

If the xlb file is above 40 KB in size then it should probably be
deleted as it is beginning to suffer from what we call xlb file bloat.
This can degrade performance eventually and even cause crashes.

Deleting, takes you back to square 1 with no customization.

But I don't think that you are closer to solving the problem of why
the toolbar customization was lost. That was probably due to the
customization being to one of Excel's toolbars which was re-set.
Better to put your own buttons on a new "personal toolbar". But I am
assuming that the toolbar has actually gone! It may still be available
under View > Toolbars if the custom toolbar was accidentally
de-selected.

The difficulty with these things is that when they're lost it's
difficult to replicate the cause.

--
Regards
Norman Harker MVP (Excel)
Sydney, Australia
Holidays and Observances Wednesday 16th July: Argentina (Independence
Day); Brazil (Sao Paulo State Civil Holiday); Isle of Man (Senior Race
Day); Morocco (King Hassan II's Birthday); Palau (Constitution Day).
Celebration: Baha'i (Martyrdom of the Bab).
(e-mail address removed)
Excel and Word Function Lists (Classifications, Syntax and Arguments)
available free to good homes.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Along with Norman's comments:

Do the customized changes ever get saved (or are they always removed).

If they're always removed, you may want to see if that user has write access to
the folder that holds the *.xlb file. (I don't use win2k or winxp, but I think
you can set permissions even on local drives????)

If the changes sometimes get changed and sometimes don't, I don't have an answer
for that.

But once you get a toolbar that's saved with the controller's preferences, back
it up to a nice safe location.

If that "xlb bloat" ever hits or the customizations get lost, just copy the
backup into the correct folder.

It's not much of why answer, but it'll save time that you can spend trying to
find the why.

 

[David McRitchie]

You might check to see if they are missing because
you don't have a toolbar checked, particularly one
beginning with the word "toolbar" or "custom".
Tools, customize, toolbars (tab)

If the toolbars (.xlb) file is missing one will be created.
I would suggest renaming the .XLB file extension rather than
deleting. Deleting is so destructive if you did have customizations
which you indicate you have and they are missing.