My Excel Sheet that worked fine for months opens small without controls to enlarge

[Christian Blackburn]

Hi Gang,

My copy of Excel may have a virus or something. However, AVG
Anti-Virus says the document I'm having problems with is A-Okay.
Basically if I work with a new sheet I can minimize, maximize, and
restore the child window like one would expect. However once I open my
EPS timesheet, which I've been using without issues for months now
opens at a size to small to manipulate and in a window lacking border
controls to resize. Please see the screenshot to see what I'm talking
about. Does anyone know if there's a properties dialog or a repair
feature that can fix this document, since that's the only one that's
affected. Also I may be suffering from some as of yet unknown Excel
virus.

Here's a screenshot as you can see there are no controls on the child
window
http://www.rawseattle.org/~christian/misc/Excel_s_Child_Windows_Are_Hosed.png

Thanks for any help regarding this matter,
Christian Blackburn

 

[Christian Blackburn]

Hi Gang,

I tried opening and modifying the sheet in Open Office and then
re-opening it in excel. The sheet is larger now, but the same problem
remains (no controls to maximize)
http://www.rawseattle.org/~christian/misc/Excel_Sheet_a_Little_Better.png

I even tried that Ctrl+F10 shortcut, but it won't work on this document
.

Thanks,
Christian Blackburn

 

[Christian Blackburn]

Hi Gang,

I tried two more excellent options. I ran the repair feature, not
fixing shortcuts, I did have it keep my settings, but I will have to
discard them next. I tried fixing that Excel sheet using the following
VBA Code:
Option Explicit

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
With ActiveWindow
.EnableResize = True
.WindowState = xlNormal
.Top = 1
.Left = 1
.Height = Application.UsableHeight
.Width = Application.UsableWidth
End With


End Sub

However, everything but the first line crashes with runtime error 1004
and that's the only line I didn't take from an example in the VBA help
file.

http://www.rawseattle.org/~christian/misc/Excel Runtime Error.PNG
[Microsoft Visual Basic]
Run-time error '1004':

Application-defined or object-defined error
[OK] [Help]

I should probably note I'm working with Excell 2003 here and that I
started by checking that my copy was up to do date about 2 hours ago
using OfficeUpdate.com. I realize I can export this to CVS and start
anew, but I'd rather not if I don't have to.

Thanks,
Christian Blackburn

 

[Nick Hodge]

Christian

I've not seen this before but I notice on your toolbar a PDF button. Adobe
and Excel have never been good bedfellows. Go into your add-ins and uncheck
them all. Then see if that helps. Also think hard about any other updates
you have recently added...NOT just Excel. Has adobe recently run an update,
have AVG, etc, etc.

These are random I know, but I've not seen that behaviour in a workbook

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

 

[Christian Blackburn]

Hi Nick,

Thank you very much for your help. I did wind up doing what I thought
would work, but tried a bunch of other silly stuff in the process. For
example I let Excel repair while erasing my office settings, I thought
that'd just clear my Excel settings, but all of office is now
amnesiatic . Oh well. I tried saving into Excel 5.0 that didn't
work, so then I tried 4.0 and that doesn't support multiple sheets. So
then I tried the same from Open Office and that didn't solve the
problem either. I then saved into open office's native spreadsheet
format, closed re-opened, and then saved back into Excel 97, everything
is fine now. I would like to post the Excel file, because Microsoft
should really fix this, because I did nothing intentional or knowingly
to cause the document to lack controls 100% of the time. Also I'm
curious if anyone else has the same problem when they open the file. I
could have some weird virus on my system that is only attacking that
specific (albeit random) file.

http://www.rawseattle.org/~christian/misc/Excel file that always lacks child window controls.7z


It's compressed in 7-Zip format, for those of you who are really behind
the times 7-Zip is the open source replacement for Zip format that uses
far superior compression and is totally free. If you don't have it
installed already head on over to www.7-zip.org.

Thanks,
Christian Blackburn