menu items greyed out (Excel 2003 SP3)

[steveh]

Good afternoon

Although I am using Excel 2003 SP3 I think the the workbooks that I am having problems with may have been created in 2007 but I have no way of checking (not that I know)

I have 2 workbooks that our US office have sent me for modification, the employee that made them has left, the workbooks are not rocket science and even I can re-create them with my limited knowledge so I am intrigued more than anything. My question though is that in the examples I have been sent Format, Data and Window have been greyed out and are not selectable and Tools is not there at all. There is a hidden sheet that I can view using ASAP utilities but it just seems to contain a load of gobbledygook, any thoughts appreciated

[HansV]

What happens if you hold down the Shift key while opening the workbook?

[steveh]

What happens if you hold down the Shift key while opening the workbook?

Hi Hans

I just tried opening them both by holding shift and I get the dialog shown below so I have checked and I have the same problem in all workbooks. I have not added or deleted any add ins certainly in the last month?

Editted: Just to add that I have now run a reinstall of Office professional 2003 and the problem is the same?

[HansV]

The problem becomes clear now. The file is an add-in (.xla) disguised as a workbook (.xls).
Open the workbook, then activate the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11).
Click on ThisWorkbook in the project explorer on the left hand side.
Scroll down the list of properties in the Properties pane (usually below the project explorer) until you see the IsAddin property.
This has probably been set to True.
Set it to False.
Now click the Save button in the toolbar of the Visual Basic Editor, or press Ctrl+S.
Switch back to Excel, close the workbook, then reopen it.
Does that help?

[steveh]

Hi Hans

Thanks for the advice. I have opened and looked at all of the workbooks I have been into today, about 15 in total, and everything is set to Isaddin - False?

[HansV]

Would it be possible to remove all sensitive information from a copy of one of the offending workbooks and attach it, zipped if necessary?

[steveh]

Would it be possible to remove all sensitive information from a copy of one of the offending workbooks and attach it, zipped if necessary?

Thanks Hans

Stripped down example attached

[HansV]

I can't detect anything special about this workbook in Excel 2007. I hope that Loungers who use Excel 2002 or 2003 will also inspect it.

[VegasNath]

It looks fine to me in 2003. There is no code in the workbook, or gobbledygook.

[ChrisGreaves]

Stripped down example attached

Loads cleanly in Excel 2000.
A question: How did you 'strip it down"? Did you copy/paste values to a fresh workbook and upload that fresh workbook?

3.JPG

[steveh]

Thanks Hans, Nathan and Chris

I copied all of the suspect workbooks to a memory stick and can open them all with full funcionality from home, for some reason the page that had all of the spurious items in Fig. 1 above seems to be a red herring. The workbook sample I atttached was one of my own due to the size issue for posting and was affected the same on my work machine.

I am supposed to be on holiday today but she who must be obeyed won't be out of bed until at least 9 so I am going to sneak off to the office and do a complete reinstall.

Thanks for all of the help and suggestions

[steveh]

Just to add

I have done a comoplete uninstall and then a new reinstall and uploaded all of the updates from the MS site but the problem remains the same. I thought it might be a good idea to delete all of the 3rd part add ins and then reinstall only those that I want. I have gone into the System32 folder and in add ins the only one listed is an MSOLAP for map point but no others and there should be at the very least ASAP. Can these be stored somewhere else?

[HansV]

Excel add-ins (.xla) can be stored anywhere. See Addin Installation by Jan Karel Pieterse for some details.

[steveh]

Thank you everybody for chipping in

I found an obscure article on the MSKB that seemed to describe the problem that I had and suggested going to 'View', 'Toolbars' and then scrolling to the bottom and making sure that even if the 'Worksheet Menu Bar' was selected that you pressed 'Reset' and amazingly that did it

[HansV]

But in that case, I would have expected that you had the problem all the time, not just when you opened specific workbooks...

[ChrisGreaves]

But in that case, I would have expected that you had the problem all the time, not just when you opened specific workbooks...

Maybe a problem with Excel equivalent of Word's dreaded (RegEdit Alert) \DATA\ key?

[HansV]

Customizations to the built-in menus and toolbars for Excel 2003 are stored in a file named Excel11.xlb, along with other tweaks such as custom series/sort orders.
These customizations apply to ALL workbooks, not to specific ones.
To remove all customizations from the menu bar or a built-in toolbar, you can select it in the Tools | Customize... dialog and click Reset. The menu bar or toolbar will return to the factory-set default. Again, this will apply to ALL workbooks.
If you have persistent problems with customizations, you can delete the .xlb file or move it to a different folder. This will reset all menus, built-in toolbars, series etc. and it will apply to ALL workbooks.

In the first post in this thread, Steve reported that some menus were disabled / absent in a few specific workbooks. That doesn't point to problems with the .xlb file, but with those workbooks. So it didn't occur to me to suggest resetting the menu bar; I focused on the workbooks instead.