Excel defaults to General and won't calculate 2

[cjhacon]

When we open documents on one system in our office the following happens.

When viewing the formatting for the workbook the default shows as General. When we change the formatting to Number no decimals etc. and try to enter data in the fields, completely unrelated numbers with decimal places and leading zeroes appear in the cell. (Type a 686 and you get 0.0078}. All the formulas don't calculate either.... You can view the formula but it doesn't work.

When viewed on other PCs in the office everything works fine.

Any ideas??? This is driving me crazy!!

 

[csniffer]

Just a wild guess here as I have never come across this but sounds incredibly virus like. Is this possible?

 

[cjhacon]

I thought so too...the system checks out virus free by Norton.

 

[Wray69]

Just some things to check, dont know if they will pan out or not.

1. Check the regional settings on the system.
2. Disable the Office Add-In for Norton.
3. does this happen if you open Excel in safe mode? got to start and run and type in; excel.exe /s
4. Is this just one spreadsheet this happens in or excel in general?

Regards,

Wray

 

[carrr]

Try deleting any .xlb file you might find on the pc. Also, do the same for the personal.xls file. (If you have a lot of customizations that will be stored in the personal.xls file, you'll probably want to rename it, like personal.old, while you let Excel recreate a clean instance...so that you can make efforts to restore customizations later. Otherwise, delete it...it'll be recreated.)

 

[cjhacon]

In answer to Wray69...it happens on all excel files on this particular system. All other systems on the network function properly in excel...unless they open the file saved on disk by this machine. Then their excel defaults are overridden.

Regional settings are as they should be..the Norton add-in (officav.dll?) already disabled for another App.

I'll try the safe mode option... thanks!!

In answer to Carrr...this is a new user on the system so I will delete all previous users configs and .xlb .xls files.

Thank you both for the tips!!!

 

[carrr]

Just to clarify...you might not want to delete all .xls files, just personal.xls (usually residing in the XLStart folder)

 

[cjhacon]

It works fine in safe mode. The offensive file opens and calculates and behaves itself perfectly...now what?

I haven't been to the site yet so haven't removed any old personal.xls files. Is that the next step?

 

[Wray69]

If it works in safe mode, then go to tools add-ins and uncheck any add-ins. If thats nogo then do a search for the XLSTART folder, (might be more than one) take out anything in there. Can do a search for Excel.xlb or Excel.pip and rename them to excel.old and restart excel. Hopefully one of those suggestions will take care of it.

Regards,

Wray