Excel Completely Dysfunctional! HELP!

[Andrea]

Windows 98SE crashed and I needed to reinstall it. I also needed to
reinstall OfficeXP, which I did over the previous installation to save my
settings. I don't use Access, and Powerpoint is fine. But Word and Excel are
really a mess! Each time I start Word, a Preparing to Install window
appears. Then it's fine. The same thing happens for Excel except it gets
worse. After the Install screen, there's always an Install Exceling Feature
screen that seems to update something (each time I open Excel!). Then when I
try to save my worksheet, I get an error that Excel will attempt to restore
my document, has to close down, and will restart again. I guess that's a
polite Invalid Page Fault message. It then closes and reappears with my
restored document, but then the message appears again and this time when it
restores it, it, it's ruined. I looked at the details of the error message:
I'm not sure what you need. It says Exception Information: Oxff03645f.
There's also information about each module.

I uninstalled Excel from Add/Remove in the control panel, then reinstalled
it, but the same thing happens. Do I need to completely uninstall OfficeXP?
If so, is there a way to save my settings? And aside from removing Office in
the control panel and any files left on my hard drive, is there anything
else I need to do, e.g., in the registry? I don't know much about the
registry, so please be specific! Thanks, and please hurry!

 

[Mike A]

Click Start>Run and type 'excel /unregserver' in the dialog (without
the quotes). This will remove Excel's entries in the registry. Then
do the same thing, but type 'excel /regserver' in the dialog. This
will re-register Excel. Now, do it again, but enter 'excel /s'. This
is Excel's "safe mode", which will start Excel as if you have not run
it before. This will help if a corrupt setting is causing your
problem. You will lose some settings you have changed when you do
this, but it may fix your problem.

I think Word has similar switches, but I am not familiar with them.
Check MS' web site and search for word switches- something should be
there.

If that doesn't work...


Put the Office CD in the drive, and run the setup program. Since
Office is already installed you should have options (in increasing
order of desperation) of repair office and add/remove office
components.

Try repair office first; if that doesn't work, then uninstall the word
and excel components, reboot, and re-install them.

Good Luck!!

Windows 98SE crashed and I needed to reinstall it. ... But Word and Excel are
really a mess! ... please hurry!

Mike Argy
Custom Office Solutions
and Windows/UNIX applications

Please post on-topic responses to the newsgroup

To e-mail me, remove nospam from the address in the headers

 

[Andrea]

I wish I'd known about unregserver before! Actually, by the time this was
posted, I'd been desperate enough to uninstall/reinstall OfficeXP. I'd
previously tried to repair it without success. I used the Save Your Settings
Wizard to save settings first, but actually the savings must have been saved
in the registry, so they're all there. Everything's working fine now! Thanks
anyway. I'm printing your post out for future reference.

Andrea

 

[Mike A]

I'm glad you got it working. Here are some other quick fixes to
common radical behavior in Excel:

Strange error messages/crashing when Excel starts is commonly caused
by the toolbar settings file being bloated or corrupt:
Search your hard drive for *.xlb. Rename any that have Excel in the
file name to 'Excel10.xlb.old' or whatever you want, or just delete
them. Start Excel, and it will create a new toolbar file. You will
lose any customizations you have made to your toolbars, but Excel will
work again. Now you can customize your toolbars back to the way you
like them.
The Start>Run...>'excel /s' tip I mentioned in my previous post can
help here, too! (You can run it without the unregserver/regserver
stuff)

When you open a file, Excel gives you a message that the file is in
use by another user, even if it isn't:
First, if the file is on a network, make sure there really isn't
another user using it! Close Excel, and do a quick check using
Alt-Ctrl-Del to make sure there is no Excel process running. If there
is, end it. Delete all files in C:\Windows\Temp, and you should be
able to start Excel and open the file normally.


These are some favorite tricks that are a lot faster than
re-installing Excel or starting over on a workbook.

I wish I'd known about unregserver before! Actually, by the time this was
posted, I'd been desperate enough to uninstall/reinstall OfficeXP.

Mike Argy
Custom Office Solutions
and Windows/UNIX applications

Please post on-topic responses to the newsgroup

To e-mail me, remove nospam from the address in the headers