I am running MS Office XP Professional at work, and for some time I haven't been able to Print from Excel - no error message, it just does nowt - or send email from within Excel - can't remember exactly what happens but I think the File, Send To command is greyed out - or open any of my desktop shortcuts - Excel fires up but doesn't open even a blank worksheet. And now MailMerge from some Excel files isn't working - I've set the print area, select the bit I want, but it brings up a dialogue box which says 'Table' at the top, the offer of other Excel files, and various meaningless options none of which get me anywhere! Selecting a different print area on a different worksheet seems OK ... so maybe it's that worksheet but I don't know what's wrong with it!
I've tried detect and repair, several times, to no avail.
Wondering whether if I do a complete uninstall and reinstall I will lose all my addresses etc in Outlook?
Running AVG, updating and checking religiously and the machine seems clean, do other checks like Housecall and Stinger as well, nothing coming up, spyware cleaned off etc etc etc, but nothing seems to fix this.
My colleague running an almost identical system doesn't have these problems, although I couldn't do the mailmerge on her machine, had to use a Win98 machine with Office 2000 for that. The difference between her machine and mine is that I also have OpenOffice installed which I use occasionally. Could that be my problem?
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Close Excel and all Office programs. Locate every copy of Normal.dot on your computer (using the file search utility. Rename then to Normal.dox) then restart Excel.
A new copy of Normal.dot will be created. This may allow you to function normally again. If you have problems then delete this copy of normal.dot and rename the others back again.
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OK, I'll give that a try tomorrow. Thanks.
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Close Excel and all Office programs. Locate every copy of Normal.dot on your computer (using the file search utility. Rename then to Normal.dox) then restart Excel.
A new copy of Normal.dot will be created. This may allow you to function normally again. If you have problems then delete this copy of normal.dot and rename the others back again. I'm still at home rather than work, but I've been thinking about this overnight.
Normal.dot is a WORD template. Excel templates are .xlt and there doesn't seem to be a 'Normal' for Excel.
AND my new Word documents are usually based on a 'Normal' template stored on the network rather than my local machine.
Do either of these things make a difference to how I proceed, or do I just have a go and see if it helps?
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Having terrible problems with my computer yesterday: Excel and Word refusing to open certain documents - both just 'freezing'. Trying again I was sometimes getting a warning about 'This document caused a serious error last time you opened it: do you want to proceed?' But not always: sometimes the program just froze again.
Tried Detect and Repair, Reboot, etc. Tried renaming the normal.dot template on my machine to normal.dox, as suggested, and that seemed to fix it for a while, but then it all blew up again at the end of the day.
I can open the documents on someone else's machine, no problem! AVG is up to date and not finding anything. Any other bright ideas?
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How old is the computer / When was MS office installed? Finally other than yourself how many other people use the computer?
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How old is the computer / When was MS office installed? Finally other than yourself how many other people use the computer? Less than a year old, MS Office installed at the time and updates applied since. I don't think anyone but me has used it. Plenty of free space on the hard drive.
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One more silly question, does the printer print out from other applications?
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One more silly question, does the printer print out from other applications? Not a silly question at all. Yes, the printer prints out from all other applications.
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I would opt to do a custom install, you'll need your MS Office setup CD. Go through the regular proceedure for installing, but when you get to the option to do a custom install select this. The only changes you will need to make initially will be to point the installation to the folder where MSO is currently installed. DO NOT REMOVE the old version, just install again into that directory this will replace ALL program & system files along with registry references etc. If you have inadvertly picked up a corrupt file this will be reset and you should resume with normal use.
Installation should take a maximum of 20 minutes.
REMEMBER DO NOT REMOVE THE ORIGINAL VERSION, just install into ot's directory.
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Thank you very much, I will give that a whirl on Monday. And let you know how I get on.
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It didn't work, but the Custom Install process for XP doesn't seem to let you do a straight install. You can repair, and you can uninstall, and there's a third option which I think amounts to 'adding or removing bits and pieces'. Well I've tried repair, and I don't want to uninstall before I've at least backed up my Outlook addres book, and the adding bits and pieces doesn't seem to want you to add bits you've already got, which I have. I tried making it unavailable and reinstalling, but that didn't seem to help.
When I get to work I'm going to try:
- finding the blank Excel template which is the equivalent of 'normal.doc' and renaming that, then re-firing Excel
- finding the folder which has all the Excel program files in and deleting all of them, then reinstalling
- screaming if neither of them works.
A thought which occurred to me while I was discovering your suggestion wasn't working: would rebooting after reinstalling help or be necessary?
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Mmmm, this sounds more like a "networking" problem than an issue with either MSO or XP, unfortunately I know very little about networking and dentrimental effects of problems.
You may have to call in an expert?
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The expert is here this morning sorting out my failure to backup to DVD but so far he hasn't come up with any bright ideas for this one! And I've asked him about it before. The fact that it's only my computer that has this problem is what makes me want to keep attacking it from that angle, so I'll keep you posted.
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When I get to work I'm going to try:[list][*]finding the blank Excel template which is the equivalent of 'normal.doc' and renaming that, then re-firing Excel[*]finding the folder which has all the Excel program files in and deleting all of them, then reinstalling ooooo .... I wouldn't do that. Much better to uninstall Excel using the add/remove software option in Control Panel. This will also remove Excel components that you can't physically see in the folders and the registry.
Given that you have problems with Word too, I would suggest a reinstall of Offic, this way
Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Files & Settings Transfer Wizard
Follow the Wizard and transfer the settings from what the wizard calls your Old Computer. Choose the selection that allows you to transfer your files & settings to a place on your network.
In the dialog box "What do you want to transfer" you can simply select the default, or select specific options. Unless you're absolutely confident about the custom option, then choose the default.
Then, uninstall Office, using Control Panel, Add/Remove Software. Reboot. Then do a clean install of Office, again through Add/Remove Software.
Then go back to the Files & Settings Transfer Wizard and pull back the file you placed on the network earlier. This will put back all the critical files & settings you had before, including your Outlook file, so you won't lose any addresses.
Then go to the Office Update center here
There are at least two Service Packs for Office, so you should find a few updates that you need to download.
A thought which occurred to me while I was discovering your suggestion wasn't working: would rebooting after reinstalling help or be necessary? Generally, you'll be forced to reboot. If not, then do it anyway. I find it helps the PC to "sort itself out".
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I got as far as copying my settings ... so I suppose that's progress! I also temporarily lost half my network so spent a merry half hour crawling round under desks checking wires, it was of course the half of the network with the printer connected to it so I couldn't just ignore it and hope the problem went away. (Although I was tempted to move the printer and connect it to the working half of the network!)
If only I could EITHER try to do my work OR sort out the computers, it's attempting both simultaneously which is causing me serious grief. :'(
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Something you just said caused an idea to spring to mind. Have you move the printer directly to your PC and connected in a non network manor.
If the printer works then you can conclude that it is a network problem, if it still fails then obviously the problem is more complex.
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Something you just said caused an idea to spring to mind. Have you move the printer directly to your PC and connected in a non network manor.
If the printer works then you can conclude that it is a network problem, if it still fails then obviously the problem is more complex. Thanks for the suggestion. The printer used to be connected to my machine, I'm desperately trying to remember where, physically, it sat when that was the case! Because I can't think where I'd put it now!
What I can't remember is when it stopped printing from Excel. As I don't print from Excel at all often it could have been when we moved it and I didn't notice at the time.
We moved it because I've got an XP machine and it caused horrific problems for the Win98s when they tried to print to it.
However, IF the uninstall / reinstall option doesn't work tomorrow that will be my next step. Watch this space ...
My techie chap thinks that one of my colleagues using OpenOffice also can't print from Calc ... but she can print from whatever OO word is called. ???
Badly need to sort it out before we get a new network printer / copier installed or we won't know where to start with any problems they have!
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Well, today I managed to uninstall Office, did a quick defrag which it allegedly didn't need but I thought it couldn't do any harm, and then I installed Office. So far so good.
But then I tried to get those updates. First attempt it said it would take 14 minutes. I wandered off, came back, and it was just over half way through, still saying 14 minutes, and completely hung. >
Shut down IE with Ctrl-Alt-Del, tried again. Second attempt it said initially 14 minutes, but once I'd actually fired it up it said about 45 minutes. I wandered off, came back, and it had hung with a minute left! > >
Shut down IE with Ctrl-Alt-Del, tried again. Beat the fax machine into submission and left the third attempt running overnight. > > >
If it still hasn't worked I will at least have a go at printing from Excel without the updates and see what happens!!!
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if you only moved the printer because the 98's had problems bring it back on, it would be simpler to to create a setup floppy for the 98s from the xp to 'help' them see your printer.
if you choose to keep the printer on the network,however. here are a few questions.
?does the printer connect directly to a network cable ?
?is there a print server ?
if the answer to either questions is yes :
?do you know the printer(or print server) IP ?
?can you ping it ?(open command prompt and type ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - replace X's with actual ip address)
if you cant ping the printer. look in its settings to find its ip address and subnetmas and adjust to fit with your network settings...
ne help ?