Lost customized toolbars & recalc

[CaymanCarrie]

One of our users at my company has complained that he has all of a sudden
lost all customized toolbars in Excel. Is there any reason why this might
have happened to him, but not to anyone else on the network?

Also, Excel always seems to open up with manual recalculation set rather
than auto recalc.

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jim Rech]

Excel keeps toolbar customizations in a file with a name like Excel.XLB in
this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

If this file was deleted (with Excel closed) user customizations would
disappear.

Excel always opens in auto calc mode but if the first workbook or template
opened was saved in manual mode it will switch. So it sounds as if maybe
the user's Personal.xls or a startup template was last saved while Excel was
in manual calc mode.

--
Jim
| One of our users at my company has complained that he has all of a sudden
| lost all customized toolbars in Excel. Is there any reason why this might
| have happened to him, but not to anyone else on the network?
|
| Also, Excel always seems to open up with manual recalculation set rather
| than auto recalc.
|
| Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
|

 

[Dave Peterson]

First, the easy answer...

Excel determines what the calculation mode should be by the first workbook
that's opened in that session. So if the user opens a workbook that's been
saved in manual calculation mode as the first workbook, the user will be stuck
in manual calculation mode.

This seems to be a common problem for people who share workbooks in a common
folder--someone changes calculation to manual and then saves the file. Then a
subsequent user opens that workbook first and is in manual calculation mode.

The answer is either open a workbook that saved in automatic mode--or learn how
to toggle that setting.

===
The second answer is just a guess.

Excel stores customized toolbars in a file named *.xlb (name and location vary
with the version of windows and excel). This file is unique to each user.

If someone deleted that *.xlb file (by mistake), then there go the customized
toolbars.

I know that once I've customized my toolbar the way I like it, I find it (using
windows start button|search) and make a backup of it--just in case it disappears
(or I break it by mistake).