Strange behavior

[DeRussie]

Hi,
I have installed office 2003 8 months ago.
Suddenly 2 months ago, Excel refused to open. In fact, it opens, loads the
add-ins, and stay on a grey page (no work sheet open), no menu is active.
When I close it (red button up right) a worksheet opens for a second and
Excel colses down.
The Microsoft support recmmended me to create a new user in Windows with
administrator rights, which I did. It worked for a month or so, and again the
same breakdown with the new user name.
Microsoft refuses to help because I have used all my hotline rights... and i
refuse to pay 50 euros for something that seems to be Microsoft
responsibility. Before suing them, can anyone help me ? Thanks

 

[Gary''s Student]

Remove or hide your Excel10.xlb or Excel11.xlb file as a first try.

 

[Bill Ridgeway]

At a quick look Excel11.xlb seems to be a basic Excel worksheet. Can this
be used in a similar way to Word's normal.dot to configure the way in which
Excel opens?

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions

 

[Dave Peterson]

*.xlb is the file where excel stores changes to the toolbars. It can get
corrupted and Gary's Student guessed that it was that corruption that was
causing the trouble for the original poster.

You can create a couple of templates (*.xlt in excel speak) that can be used as
the basis for new workbooks (and new worksheets in existing workbooks).

The first one is named book.xlt (file|saveas|Template (*.xlt)).

This is stored in your XLStart folder. When you click the New icon on the
standard toolbar, you'll get a new workbook based on this template.

The second one is named sheet.xlt and is saved in the same location (XLStart
folder).

When you add a new worksheet to an existing workbook, you'll get a worksheet
based on this template.

(When I did mine, I really created a single sheet workbook and saved it as
book.xlt, then I just copied that book.xlt to sheet.xlt--all within my XLStart
folder.)

 

[DeRussie]

Thanks for the idea, but it did not help. I found some 4 Excel11.xlb under
the same user, deleted all of them. Excel hardly accepted to open once but
not twice !!!
The strange thing is that it works perfectly under the second user (not
administrator but wide rights) !!!
It looks like Excel is not activated under my user's name (administrator).
It's a Student/teachers version of Office 2003 - OS is Win XP Home edition.
If you have another idea, I am grid to receiving it. However, please be
clear because I am not a specialist neither english is my mother language.
Anyway, thanks for the help.