Print Preview is gone!

[Bluedot]

Until a few weeks ago, Print Preview in my Excel worked fine. Then one day,
it stopped. I have the Print Preview icon on the Toolbar, but clicking on it
does nothing. The FILE dropdown menu used to list "Print Preview", but now it
is gone. Not just greyed out - it's not even on the list any more. And it
does not matter whether my printer is turned on or off.
If I go to START/Programs/Excel and open a new file, it's all there. But all
my saved Excel files have the problem. I am stumped.
If it helps, the same time this happened, I no longer got my standard and
formatting toolbars without specifically selecting them every time I open an
xls file. I cannot seem to fix that either, but at least I can force the
Toolbar views each time. Perhaps the simultaneous timing of the onset of
these two problems is a clue?

 

[Shane Devenshire]

Hi,

I would reinstall Excel.

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you open excel in safe mode:

Close excel
Windows start button|Run
type:
excel /safe

Do you get the normal toolbars? And do they work ok?

If yes, then the first thing I would do is reset my toolbar by deleting the
associated toolbar file (*.xlb).

Close excel

use windows search to look for *.xlb
and delete all that you find (or move them to a safe location if you're worried)

And remember to look through hidden folders, too. People can have trouble
finding them.

If you can't find your files using windows start button|Search, then you could
use an old DOS command to search and delete/move them

Windows Start button|Run
type:
CMD
(to get to the Command prompt)

C:
(to get to the C: drive--change this to the drive that excel is installed on)

cd\
(to get to the root directory)

dir *.xlb /s

The /s says to search subfolders, too.

Make a note of the locations of the found files.

And delete/move them.

Then reopen excel (normally).

If the toolbars work ok, you're done. But if you still don't see the File|Print
preview option, then you have more work to do.

(I'd close excel and search for those *.xlb files once more--just to make sure
you didn't miss any!)

But after that, you'll have to find the offending workbook that's causing the
trouble.

If the problem still exists, are you ready to do some detective work to find out
the culprit?

Chip Pearson has some notes on how to diagnose startup errors:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

And Jan Karel Pieterse has more notes:
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/StartupProblems.asp

Essentially, you'll turn off all the addins/startup workbooks and then open
excel. And then turn on each addin (closing and reopening) one at a time to
find the culprit.