Things this newbie doesn't know

C

cheshirekat

I bought Office X shortly after buying my new PowerBook this past February.
Previously, I'd used Excel off and on with a pc at work - enough to get the
job done without having a clue what I was doing it. In other words, I faked
it. I bought Office for schoolwork because of the educational discount. I've
been using a Mac for ten years without it.

Now that I have Excel at home, I have the luxury of time allowed to find out
just how cool it is. I've also become quite obsessive about learning it.
I've been lurking on this newsgroup for about a month, spending numerous
hours on various web sites and bought a few books; "Excel 2002 Formulas" and
"Excel Charts" by John Walkenbach. I also read through an Excel 97 and Excel
2000 for Dummies book, loaned to me by a coworker.

I'm an English major, hoping to become a technical writer. I talked my way
out of the basic computer classes and will be taking an "Excel Concepts"
class this Fall semester.

Enough with the background. I just wanted to convey that my knowledge of
Excel is just enough to be dangerous, yet not enough to convince myself to
be patient for classes in the Fall.

Using '=INFO("release")' I get a value of 10.1.
I thought I had installed the updates to 10.1.3. If I had done so, will the
value still be 10.1?

I've been running Excel almost constantly for over a month. A couple of
weeks ago, I installed the Analysis Toolpack. Since then, I've experienced
numerous crashes when attempting to select a menu option. It's not
consistent. There isn't a specific workbook that causes this behavior. It
even happens with new workbooks. Sometimes, the first click on the menu
after opening the file causes Excel to quit, sometimes it's the third menu
access. The only constant has been the menus selected. The menus are
"Excel", "File", and "Edit". I can select options from the other menus
several hundred times without Excel quitting. While I prefer keyboard
shortcuts, I certainly don't have the experience to have memorized these
menus yet.

I deleted the Excel plist, toolbar, keyboard shortcuts and settings
preferences, but the problem remains. I haven't had any other applications
quit or crash. Even Word is stable.

When Excel opens, the default is to open the project gallery. However, the
gallery only displays blank Excel, Word, Powerpoint, web page, calendar and
mail documents - No templates. I know how to choose the different categories
and use the drop down menus to show "All Office Documents" and all the
templates were accessible from the project gallery just a couple of weeks
ago.

I'm thinking I should completely re-install Office unless someone knows of
another option I can try. I used Word extensively throughout the Spring
semester before I began to explore Excel this summer. I have also visited
the Mactopia web site regularly for updates. If I decide to try the updates,
should I repair permissions after each update - or only after I've installed
all the updates to 10.1.4?

I have questions about features and formulas after I solve this crashing
problem. So, expect to hear from me again.

Thanks.
 
J

Jim Gordon

Hi

You're doing very well, indeed!

Don't worry about the INFO function showing 10.1. The 10.1.3 update only
dealt with some language issues, and I don't think it changed Excel (I could
be wrong, but I doubt even if it did whether the INFO function result would
change).

All of the bugs you experienced after you installed something from the value
pack is caused because you need to re-run the 10.1.2 and 10.1.3 updates
after you install new things from the value pack. You have a mix of updated
and non-updated parts of office on your computer, and that will cause lots
and lots of problems. While you're in the updating mode, grab the 10.1.4
update and put that in, too.

Hope your course works out well. You have the best resources in the world at
your fingertips.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

All responses should be made to this newsgroup within the same thread.
Thanks.

About Microsoft MVPs:
http://www.mvps.org/

Search for help with the free Google search Excel add-in:
<http://www.rondebruin.nl/Google.htm>

----------
 
C

cheshirekat

Jim Gordon said:
Don't worry about the INFO function showing 10.1. The 10.1.3 update only
dealt with some language issues, and I don't think it changed Excel (I could
be wrong, but I doubt even if it did whether the INFO function result would
change).

All of the bugs you experienced after you installed something from the value
pack is caused because you need to re-run the 10.1.2 and 10.1.3 updates
after you install new things from the value pack. You have a mix of updated
and non-updated parts of office on your computer, and that will cause lots
and lots of problems. While you're in the updating mode, grab the 10.1.4
update and put that in, too.

Ok. This is an update. I repaired permissions on my hard drive from the DVD
that came with my PowerBook. Then I installed the Excel updates to the most
current and repaired permissions again. So far, all is well and without a
single quit from Excel.

It's good to be back in business with a stable Excel.

cheshirekat
 

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