Why won't the Task Pane stay open?

[Brymor]

In Tools - Options & View, despite having checked the “Start-up Task Paneâ€,
whenever I open Excel, the Task Pane comes up momentarily, but, as soon as
‘Book 1’ loads it disappears. I find the task pane useful for opening
previously used items, which works OK in ‘word’ and cannot fathom out why
this is happening in Excel. Can someone please help? I’m using Office 2003
and allow automatic updates.

 

[Jim Rech]

The design of the task pane is that it closes as soon as you open your first
workbook. A workbook opening automatically at startup like Personal.xls
qualifies.

To block this and keep the task pane open all the time you have to make a
registry entry. (Run Regedit.exe from Start->Run).

Navigate to this branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General

and create the Dword new key (if it does not exist already):

DoNotDismissFileNewTaskPane

Set/change its value to 1.

 

[Nick Hodge]

Brymor

It's because you have a personal.xls or start-up template which opens with
Excel, it therefore thinks you have no need for the start-up task pane

Read here for some workarounds

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826837/en-us

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
(e-mail address removed)
www.nickhodge.co.uk