Debugging VBA in file that causes Excel to crash

[Richard J.]

I'm using Excel 97 and Windows XP Home. I have a 1.3MB Excel file with
a fair amount of VBA that I use almost every day. Today I found that
Excel crashes when opening this file. I managed eventually to load it
in safe mode without running any macros in order to recover the recent
data, which I have patched into a slightly older version, which is
working fine.

Now I find that I can't even open the original file in safe mode. If I
try to disable macros, it says that it's got an Excel 4.0 macro which it
can't disable. (Could that be a combo box from the Forms toolbar? I
can't think how else I could have such a macro.) Then I get the "Excel
has encountered a problem and has to close" message.

I'm assuming that I must have inadvertently tweaked the VBA code in some
way which is causing Excel to crash. Is there any way of looking at the
VBA code in this file?

 

[Dave Peterson]

You might have some luck by trying a newer version of excel (xl2k, xl2002,
xl2003 may do a better job).

But lots of people have praised OpenOffice.Org for saving their data and code.

http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD

 

[Richard J.]

Thanks. I downloaded OpenOffice and it manages to open the file. It's
extremely slow at calculating the formulas on the sheets, completely
messes up my careful formatting, and won't run my VBA macros, so no good
as an Excel replacement, BUT it enables me to extract the VBA code and
try to work out what's upsetting Excel. 75MB seems a bit big for an
Excel recovery program, but it's free and my ISP has just upgraded my
broadband speed to 4Mb, so it's just what I wanted. Thanks again.
Richard J.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Thanks for posting back.

Thanks. I downloaded OpenOffice and it manages to open the file. It's
extremely slow at calculating the formulas on the sheets, completely
messes up my careful formatting, and won't run my VBA macros, so no good
as an Excel replacement, BUT it enables me to extract the VBA code and
try to work out what's upsetting Excel. 75MB seems a bit big for an
Excel recovery program, but it's free and my ISP has just upgraded my
broadband speed to 4Mb, so it's just what I wanted. Thanks again.
Richard J.