Office 2007/Vista 64-bit: missing save dialog, cannot save

  • Thread starter Thread starter Matthias Schoener
  • Start date Start date
M

Matthias Schoener

I am looking for some help on a weird problem with Office, to which I
cannot find any solution hints anywhere:

I am running Windows Vista Home Premium, 64-bit edition, and have just
installed Office 2007 Home and Student.

The problem is that I cannot save any Excel workbooks, because I cannot
get the "Save as..." dialog to appear. I have tried it using the Office
button, followed by clicking "Save as", and "Excel Workbook", as well as
by clicking <Ctrl> + "s". Neither of those gives any response. I have also
tried to close the workbook after making changes, which does bring up the
familiar dialog asking, whether I wish to save my changes. Immediately
after I press "Yes", the same dialog will reappear. I have to answer "No"
in order to exit from the dialog, and close Excel (without saving my
workbook). The problem occurs with all workbooks, both new/blank, and
pre-existing. It is always impossible to save the file. If I leave Excel
open for a while, it will let me know that "an unexpected error has
occurred, causing autosave to be disabled for the remainder of the
session. Eventually, Excel will crash.

The problem is consistently reproducible.

Here are some other things I have tried: I have installed the Office 2007
SP1. Still the same problem. I have uninstalled and re-installed Office
2007. Still the same problem. I have re-installed the SP1. Still the same
problem. I have tried to save documents in Word 2007. That works fine. The
same DVD media was used to install Office 2007 on two other PCs (Microsoft
allow up to 3 PCs in one household to use the same Office 2007 HaS
license); there are no problems with either of the other installations.

There is no shortage of storage space (almost empty 500GB hard drive), or
system memory (8GB).

Any thoughts or hints would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Its possible it is a video card or video driver problem. Try updating the
drivers. If that doesn't work, try a different video card. Expensive just
to try obviously. Let us know.

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
http://www.add-ins.com
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel
 
There is registry setting that can block file saves. I have no idea why it
would be set but no harm to check. Run Regedit.exe from Start->Run or
whatever the Vista equivalent is and look here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security\FileSaveBlock

I have nothing under this key but if there is something there it could be
the problem.
 
Bob and Jim,

Thank you so much for your help. I tried Jim's recommendation first, since
in my case, it seemed to be less trouble than switching out the graphics
card. And it worked!

I did not have the specific registry key that Jim mentions, but close-by,
under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security\Trusted
Locations\ I found an xla add-in that I thought might be the culprit, It
was in a non-standard location, since it was probably developed for an
ancient Excel version. I took out the key, and my save dialog was back.

Again, thank you so much for your help!

Matthias
 
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