finding a file in excel

[Guest]

I think is going to be a hard one. I know Excel 2003 and newer has a file (it
is called “Excel11.xlb†on my computer). In this file Excel saves what
toolbars were visible the last time Excel was shut down. The problem is that
I want to open this file when I am closing a program I have developed. By
opening this file I will restore the toolbars various users have setup on
their Excel. I can already restore built in toolbars, but I want to restore
custom toolbars if any user has set made their own. Excel knows where this
file is located because in accesses it when excel is opened. I know where it
is on my computer, but I can not go around to every ones computer and find
the file and map the location. And I am sure it is not the same name on every
computer. So, if Excel knows where it is, how do I make my program call this
file right before the user closes their program.

 

[Ronald Dodge]

By default, Excel stores any custom toolbars in the Personal.xls workbook,
which is stored under the general startup folder that any user can get to.
This workbook is also generally hidden as it's hidden by default. However,
the user can attach such toolbars to other workbooks.

For Excel startup locations (1 for all users, 1 for the specific user, and 1
alternate startup location that the user specifies under the General tab of
the Options dialog box), you may want to look up article 822107

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822107

You may also want to take a look at the list of the various ENVIRON function
enumerators, which will help in mapping to the user's Document and Settings
profile

http://www.utteraccess.com/forums/printthread.php?Cat=&Board=53&main=693880&type=thread

The other file that I see for Excel, which I'm not sure what the pip
extension is for, but anyhow, it seems to be pertanent to the user settings
is the following:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office\Excel10.pip (Note, this is for Excel 2002)

The file path you refering to is:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Excel\Excel10.xlb (Again, this is Excel 2002)

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Guest]

Hi Ronald,
here is some code the statement works (i think because it is a .xls file, i
tried a .doc file). i want to open the Excel11.xlb file. if you have any
suggestion that would be great thanks

'want to open .xlb
'doesn't work
'Workbooks.Open ("C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Excel\Excel11.xlb")
'Workbooks.Open ("C:\Documents and Setting\JoshChandler\Application
Data\Microsoft\Excel\Excel11.xlb")

'does work
'Workbooks.Open ("M:\RalcoProdApp\SL - Sales\SL002 Ultimate
Calculator\Names.xls")

 

[Gord Dibben]

Ronald

Incorrect information on later versions.

Excel stores all Menu and Toolbar customizations in the *.XLB file.

I believe you are thinking of pre-xl97 when Excel had the old menu editor and
stored the customizations in Personal.xls


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Gord Dibben]

Josh

I don't believe you should be messing around with anyone's Excel *.xlb file.

Create the toolbars when your application opens.

When your application closes, delete the toolbars and restore the user's
original setup without affecting user's *.xlb file

Sub Add_Controls()
Dim i As Long
Dim onaction_names As Variant
Dim caption_names As Variant
onaction_names = Array("macro1", "macro2", "macro3")
caption_names = Array("caption 1", "caption 2", "caption 3")
With Application.CommandBars("Cell")
For i = LBound(onaction_names) To UBound(onaction_names)
With .Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton)
.OnAction = ThisWorkbook.Name & "!" & onaction_names(i)
.Caption = caption_names(i)
End With
Next i
End With
End Sub

Sub Delete_Controls()
Dim i As Long
Dim caption_names As Variant
caption_names = Array("caption 1", "caption 2", "caption 3")
With Application.CommandBars("Cell")
For i = LBound(caption_names) To UBound(caption_names)
On Error Resume Next
.Controls(caption_names(i)).Delete
On Error GoTo 0
Next i
End With
End Sub

For more on this see Debra Dalgleish's site.

http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlToolbar02.html

John Walkenbach has a download named MenuMakr which you can incorporate into
your workbook for creating custom menus.

http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/tip53.htm


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Ronald Dodge]

I have seen that happen in XL97, XL2000, and XL2002, but can't say for
XL2003 or later.

Even though I have used earlier versions of Excel, but I never did use Excel
extensively until Excel 97, which I hated Excel 97 cause of all the
different issues that I ran into with Excel 97. As far as that's concerned,
I would have rather worked with Lotus 1-2-3, V2.3 than Excel 97, SR-2. It
was only when I started working with Excel 2000 (which was sent to me free
of charge as a fix to a charting bug in Excel 97, SR-2), did I find Excel
finally easier to work with than Lotus 1-2-3 v2.3 Lotus 1-2-3 v2.3 is a DOS
program, which may be a bit tough to work with in some ways on a system that
still uses DOS, but at least it was a relatively stable program.

Two of the issues that I had to contend with in Excel 97, SR-2 were:

When dividing the sum of one range greater than 25 rows by the sum of
another range greater than 25 rows, it would return the result as "1/0"

When using charts, no matter what setting was used on the legend, the legend
would gradually work it's way from the position it was set at to the top
center portion of the chart. That was during the days when my VBA knowledge
was very limited.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Peter T]

Comments in line -

I have seen that happen in XL97, XL2000, and XL2002, but can't say for
XL2003 or later.

If you mean these versions store custom toolbars in Personal.xls vs the XLB
file, that would only occur if a toolbar was attached to Personal.xls (not
typical), otherwise toolbars are indeed stored in the XLB file as Gord says.

Two of the issues that I had to contend with in Excel 97, SR-2 were:

When dividing the sum of one range greater than 25 rows by the sum of
another range greater than 25 rows, it would return the result as "1/0"

Works fine for me in XL97, IOW I can't recreate that problem, unless of
course the result should indeed be 1/0. Perhaps you are referring to certain
formulas that reference an array that exceeds the 5461 element limit. The
same limitation persisted largley unresolved and poorly documented in
XL2000. However I don't relate that to what you describe.

When using charts, no matter what setting was used on the legend, the legend
would gradually work it's way from the position it was set at to the top
center portion of the chart. That was during the days when my VBA knowledge
was very limited.

I haven't particularly noticed that though XL97 charts are somewhat more
'sensitive' in some unexpected ways. However the SR2 fixed quite a few
things with charts.

It's history now and despite some bugs, in its day Excel 97 was a killer App
!

Regards,
Peter T

 

[Ronald Dodge]

The formula bug that I mentioned has nothing to do with arrays or range
names, just simply selecting ranges. I don't use arrays all that much on
the spreadsheet side, but I do use them on the VBA side.

The chart bug was confirmed by MS. MS said it was fixed in XL2000 and that
was the bug that had them send XL2000 to me free of charge as a fix to the
issue. The issue happened with the combination of the manipulating data,
updating charts via calculations, printing the charts, and saving the file
that caused the legend to move. The bonus kicker that I didn't expect,
XL2000 not only had the various issues fixed that was in XL97, SR-2, but it
also ran 3 times faster (Both calculations and macros) than XL97, SR-2.

For the toolbar thing, I was just going by what my experience had been.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Peter T]

That was good of MS!

I have no doubt the Chart bug, whatever it was, was a problem for you,
however generally our experiences with Excel 97 are very different. If
anything I find '97 calculates noticeably faster than '2000, and each new
version a bit slower than its predecessor. However each newer version is
better at managing larger volumes of data. I agree Charts were significantly
improved in XL2000 (more stable) but I doubt most users doing typical things
would notice the difference.

I have done quite a bit of VBA speed testing in successive versions.
v5.3/XL97 is perhaps very slightly slower than VBA6 introduced in '2000,
though it might depend on what the code does.

I don't quite follow the bug you mentioned with ranges in Excel 97 but not
to worry. I only commented about it previously to allay potential concerns
of any continuing Excel 97 readers.

Regards,
Peter T

 

[Ronald Dodge]

All I know, when I used Excel 97, it took the Excel side of the reports 1.5
hours to process the data (at that time, it was over a total of 14 different
machine center files, 5 work order based files, and 4 different summary
files). The day after I uninstalled Excel 97 and then installed Excel 2000
with nothing else changed, it only took the Excel side of the reports 0.5
hours to process the data. Since that time, some of the calculations has
been transferred from formula to VBA code. This was the summary files from
the beginning to the end of the reporting process, first each of the
different machine files would be opened, process, then closed one by one,
then the same for the work order base files. Calculation mode was set to
manual cause of the redundant calculations, which it seems to me as though
Excel 2000 didn't do nearly as much of the redundant calculations as Excel
97 did. Don't get me wrong, it's still there, but it's not as bad. I don't
know what it would have been with Excel 2000, but with Excel 97, with
opening the 18 different workbooks when I didn't know anything about VBA
other than knowing that it was in Excel, it took Excel 40 to 50 minutes to
open and calculation all of those files, but yet, after playing around with
VBA as my training at Executrain was delayed by 1.5 months due to the
instructor having a medical reason for postponing the 2 day VBA course, I
managed to get all 18 of those files opened, processed, and closed in a
period of 3 to 5 minutes, but then that was also at a time when it had very
small amount of data to process as compared to once we started pulling the
data from the DB. That's cause now you dealing with about 100 records per
shift per machine rather than just 1 record per shift per machine then.
Pulling the data from the DB was in place prior to moving from XL97 to
XL2000.

I assume this difference had a lot to do with the way compilation took place
on the VBA side as I did run into issues with some macros that's been
converted to Excel 2000 not working properly on Excel 97. At that time, I
was the only person within the building using Excel 2000, so I had to be
extremely careful in that regards.

On your point about most users, I also agree that most users wouldn't have
noticed most of the differences cause there were very few differences on the
user side, but there were quite a large number of the differences on the
technical side of XL2000 that I noticed. Most users though aren't into the
technical side of Excel, so they wouldn't notice those differences. Excel
97 was also crashing a lot on me, but then Excel 2000 didn't crash nearly as
much on me. Some of it may have been due to me learning the limitations,
but some of it was also cause of the technical differences between the 2
versions.

The other factor, I do deal with large volumes of data so that may also had
some factor in the speed difference between the 2 versions, which I used VBA
to control what get calculated in what order, mainly in sheet order.

These files has evolved quite abit over the years and it's going through
another transfirmation yet again, though the basic layout has stayed the
same and the raw data hasn't changed any.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000