Excel - Workbook Disappears

[AlsGal52]

Using Windows 2000, Office 2000

Before we go any further, picture this:

You open Excel...it shows Book1...you close the file, not the program...you now have a big gray empty space in the middle of your monitor.

Ok, hold that thought now.

An associate at the company I work for keeps getting the following problem:

She opens an Excel file...at first the file appears in the "minimized" state and then it just disappears altogether and she gets that big gray empty space with not even the minimized box showing.

If I go to the Windows pull-down, I can see the file listed but I can click on the listed file until I'm blue in the face and it still won't allow me to maximize it.

I have been able to get the file by click on New Window in the Windows pull-down but then I've got 2...one titled for instance "book1:1" and the other titled "book1:2".

I hope this gives enough information that someone can tell me what the problem is and how I can fix it.

Thanks.

 

[xlbo]

try windows>unhide

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[AlsGal52]

xlbo, I was so ready to kick myself in the butt if that fixed it but alas, it did not.

I had the associate open a few files until she got one that she couldn't see (disappeared). She got to the point where the Windows pull-down showed 3 files but she could only see 2 on the screen so I had her close the 2 files that she COULD see which left only the one that she COULDN'T see.

She then went back to Windows pull-down and Unhide was grayed out...she could click on Hide if she needed to though.

Nice try though.

 

[xlbo]

have a look at window>arrange

choose an option and see if it makes any difference - I have seen a situation where a window was dragged "off" the visible screen and no-one could figure out where it was - someone randomly changed the window arrangement to cascade or summat and it "magically" re-appeared.

One question though - is this specific to 1 workbook or several ??

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[AlsGal52]

I asked the associate to bring up a few files and try your "arrange" suggestion. Unfortunately, at the moment it's working ok so we'll have to wait until it screws up on her again. It's sporadic as to when it happens. She may go a few days with it being ok and then WHAM...she'll get 3 or 4 files in a row that she can't see the actual workbook.

The above also answers your question...this is not narrowed down to just one workbook...she never knows which files or when it'll happen except...

She tells me that if she clicks on the Excel shortcut that she has on her desktop which opens Excel from scratch (brand new blank file) instead of clicking on a specific Excel file which then opens Excel...and she gets a blue bordered thing that pops up (I've asked her to take a screen shot the next time this happens so I can see what she's referring to)...then she knows for sure that the workbook is definitely going to disappear.

As I said, we'll just have to sit back and wait for it to happen again.

Thanks for hanging in there for me, Geoff.

 

[xlbo]

No worries - with it being non workbook specific, I don't reckon it's anything to do with arranging windows. I don't have too much knowledge about windows itself so I would get another opinion as well but you may need to reinstall excel for her.

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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[AlsGal52]

OK...we finally got the problem to happen again on someone else. On this new person, when she opens an attachment (.csv)in Outlook, she gets that same gray empty space BUT in the formula box, it's showing a document name. A fellow technician was trying to find out what the problem was so she hit enter on the formula box which brought up a message box stating "document is locked by system...do you want to open a read only". You had the option of cancelling, opening the read only and another option that she doesn't remember at the moment. She clicked on Cancel and it closed the document. She reopened the attachment and the document opened correctly and then it opened correctly from then on.

Does this help any?

 

[xlbo]

Sounds like it is an OS / Network issue. I've seen (kinda) similar things where there is a slow or dual network. In that instance, the user wasn't able to delete files as the network had a "shadow" image that it thought was still open. However, I'm not a network / OS expert and would not really be able to help you much further than to suggest you post in one of the network / OS fora (depending on what network / OS you are running)

Rgds, Geoff
[blue]Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes![/blue]
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