Projects accumulate in Project Explorer

[Guest]

Hi,

When I'm working on a project that opens and closes other worksheets an
entry appears in my Project Explorer -- often many of them with the same
name. Is there any way to stop this or to clear it out? Or am I the only
one having this problem? I have to periodically shut down Excel and restart
it.

I'd appreciate any advice.

 

[Guest]

You can't open and close worksheets only workbooks. You have to be careful
when copying worksheets. This is what microsoft says in the VBA help

If you don't specify either Before or After, Microsoft Excel creates a new
workbook that contains the copied sheet.

You are creating new workbooks because you didn't use the before or after.

 

[Guest]

Joel,

Forgive me, I meant that I'm open and closing workbooks. That's what happens
when I type with my brain disengaged.

 

[Guest]

What I said is still true. You are copying worksheets without the Before or
After. Excel is creating a new workbook which you are seeing in the project
window.

 

[Guest]

I'm not copying worksheets. I'm opening and closing workbooks. Maybe I'm
missing something, but before & after doesn't apply -- there's no place for
them when I open a workbook.

My problem is that file1.xls opens file2.xls and then closes it. I run my
routine again, and file1.xls opens file2.xls and closes it. If I look in my
project explorer I see file2.xls listed twice with all of the Excel objects
under it -- and... if it had any macros they would appear.

This works the same way if I open and close and close the same *.xls myself
repeatedly. Does this sound like something you've seen happen before?

 

[Mark Ivey]

This sounds oddly like something I have seen when I had XLStat installed. Do
you use any special types of addins like this? You may investigate to see if
that may be an issue for you.


Mark Ivey

 

[NickHK]

There have been a few thread in this NG (search for "ghost projects").
The general consensus is that it is caused by add-ins, probably those using
the .Net framework.
Remove all addins then restart. Add them back one by one until you see this
behaviour.

NickHK

 

[Guest]

I am having the same problem:

I have a workbook that has evolved over several years, it is used like a
template, although it is actually just a spreadsheet, named template6.xls.

I recently made some apparently minor changes.

Afterwards, every time the workbook is opened I get one additional entry in
the project explorer showing an additional "vbaproject (template6.xls)" [so
far so good] but when I close the workbook, that entry remains. If I
open/close the workbook 10 times, I get 10. If I open the template6 and save
as a new name then the new name is what appears.

So, I removed (commented out) the updates. The new behaviour didn't
go away. I saved the bad workbook as template6bad.xls and printed out the
details of the changes.

I went back to the backup of template6 before the changes and confirmed that
it did not have this behavior. I re-implemented the changes. The problem
does not exist in the re-implemented version. I checked afterwards to see
that the problem still existst in template6bad and it does.

I have an addin that I use to process large numbers of spreadsheets but this
is a red herring - its't the way one runs into the problem, only an addin can
open/close enough spreadsheets to run out of memory and thus tell you that
you have a problem.

The problem occurs if the spreadsheet is opened and then closed. You
typically wont notice there was a problem unless you look. My guess is that
there is a "Garbage Collector" routine in Excel that is supposed to clean up
when a spreadsheet is closed and under some conditions can be made to fail to
do that.

Appears to be an Excel bug.