Find Personal.xls

O

Otto Moehrbach

Excel & Win XP
I'm stumped.
I just reformatted & reinstalled everything.
I had all my files backed up including Personal.xls.
I know there are 2 XLStart folders and I need to find where Excel stores
Personal.xls so that I can copy my backed-up Personal.xls into that folder
Simple task. Not
I do Tools - Macro - Record New Macro.
I select to put my recorded macro in Personal.xls.
I type "hello" in A1 and stop the recorder.
Windows - Unhide shows me that I now have a hidden Personal.xls file. Good.
I unhide Personal.xls and save it as an unhidden file.
With Personal.xls active (on the screen) I click File - Save As.
The Save As dialog box shows me that Personal.xls is in the XLStart folder.
Good.
I click the down arrow in the box that shows XLStart and the whole path
appears. Good.
I go into Explorer and look for that path. Simple.
There is no such path. Period.
I lose some hair searching for that path. It's not there.
I do a search in the whole hardrive for Personal.xls. It's not there.
A little light comes on in my head - Hidden files & folders.
I go into My Computer - Tools - Folder Options - View tab.
I select to view hidden files and folders.
Back to Explorer.
The path is there.
Personal.xls is there.
All is well in the world again.
Not quite.
In Explorer, I do a search of the whole hardrive (I have only one such
drive) for Personal.xls.
Personal.xls is not found.
I click on View - Refresh.
It's still not there in the search.
I go into Explorer and follow the path to Personal.xls and look at the file
attributes. It is not hidden.
I solved my problem of where Personal.xls is stored so I made progress.
BTW, the search always finds BackupPersonal.xls and Jim'sPersonal.xls. The
first is my Personal.xls copied under that name and put into My Documents
(for ease of backup) automatically whenever Personal.xls is saved. The
second is a friend's Personal.xls.
My question: Why doesn't the search of the hardrive in Explorer find
Personal.xls, given that it is an unhidden file?
 
B

Bob Phillips

Otto,

Look at the advanced options on the search and see if hidden files is
checked.
 

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