transfer settings from 2000 to 2003

[Patrick A. Riley]

My friend installed Office 2003 on my new hard drive with
XP. But my old hard drive (now a slave on my upgraded
computer) has Office 2000 with ME. Of course, I can't run
Excel 2000 now to view my settings (toolbars, etc.)

Is there anyway I can view my old settings or transfer
them to Excel 2003?

 

[Nick Hodge]

Patrick

Unless you did anything fancy with start-up templates you should be able to
locate a file with en extension *.xlb (You will have two (search hidden
files too), one for your old set up and one for the new...swap them). That's
the toolbar settings done.

Now find you personal.xls files and swap them too. You should then have you
toolbar customisations and your macros

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Patrick A. Riley]

Thanks! Got my toolbars back. These were just edits I did
to Standard and Formatting toobars. Nothing I created

Now, is the "personal.xls" you mentioned the actual name
of a file? I didn't find it

 

[Gord Dibben]

Patrick

NOTE: some settings are workbook-specific and would be stored with the
workbook.

For other global stored settings..........

Do a file search for *.XLB which is the file that Excel stores some
preferences in(some are written to the registry, see below).

Menu and Toolbar customizations are saved in the *.XLB file.


A file search may turn up more than one *.XLB file. You will have
to determine which is correct one.

Note where they are and make a minor change to a Toolbar in Excel.
Save/close and see which *.XLB file was modified.

You can copy this file and save as a backup

If changing versions of Excel at the same time, you will find that
the *.XLB names are different. Make the appropriate name changes
and place in the proper folder.

xl97 is username8.xlb
xl2000 is excel.xlb.
xl2002 is excel10.xlb

Screen layout, color info, checked Add-ins and many Tools>Options
settings are stored in the Registry, not in the *.XLB file.

To see some of what's stored in the Registry have a peek at this
section in it, if you feel comfortable.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\XX.0\Excel\Options

XX is your version of Excel...8,9,10,11

Assuming you are aware of the precautions taken when editing the
Registry and know how to restore a recent backup of same.......

If not, maybe have a look here first...scroll down to "Registry
editing tips"

http://www.activewin.com/tips/reg/index.shtml

Export all these keys(as a branch group) to a .REG file so's you can
back them up.

Note also: you may want to move over your *.ACL(autocorrect files) and any
*.DIC files.

For a more comprehensive listing see Dave Peterson's posting at

http://snipurl.com/8r7x

Gord Dibben Excel MVP

 

[Dave Peterson]

I remember reading a post from one of the beta testers for xl2002 (Jim Rech,
IIRC).

He said that MS considered converting the toolbar from earlier versions into
xl2002. But then they decided not to.

I believe the reason was that there are a lot more things available under
tools|customize and you may want to create them from scratch (and add a bunch
more--or exchange some for others).

===
You may want to ensure that you're seaching for hidden files through hidden
folders when you use windows|search to look for personal.xls.

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Patrick,
Personal.xls is the file that you keep your macros in that
you want available to all of your workbooks. If you don't
have one Excel can create one for you in the correct folder
which is the XLSTART directory. You can use a different
name but that is the name Excel would produce and that is
the name by which everyone would know what you are
talking about. More information in
Getting Started with Macros and User Defined Functions
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

If you never created or installed any macros then you never
would have had a personal.xls unless you inherited it from
someone else.