Excel 2000 <-> Excel 2002

  • Thread starter Thread starter Denise
  • Start date Start date
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Denise

Last week, I had to go back to Excel 2000 because Excel
2002 has too many unfixed errors, primarily in the data
subtotal worksheet function. (Our IT team did in fact
install Service Pack 3, but the issue persists. They have
replicated the errors.)

Now that I have Excel 2000, I am finding small differences
between Excel 2000 and Excel 2002 that affect the macros I
write to streamline and simplify large accounting reports.
For example, Excel 2002 seems to have a limit set on the
size of macros; macros that run fine on my computer stop
working on (networked) PCs that have Excel 2002. I have to
split these very long macros into two parts for them to
work in Excel 2002. And yes, the macros have been cleaned
up to get rid of unneeded code.

Since my machine has Excel 2000 on it, and all of my
bosses for whom the reports and macros are being generated
have Excel 2002, what conflicts can I expect in addition
to the ones mentioned above? It would be nice to be
prepared...

Best,

Denise.
Malvern, Pennsylvania
 
Denise,

<<Because Excel 2002 has too many unfixed errors>>

Interesting. I would not have thought that to be the case.

If it simply the subtotal worksheet function, why not work around it?

In any event, you wrote about macros.

I don't know if you have applied Rob Bovey's code cleaner to you code, but,
if you haven't, then you should. It can be found here:
http://www.appspro.com/Utilities/Utilities.htm

Macros have a tendency to bloat the spreadsheet. Often 2 meg spreadsheets
suddenly come down to only a few hundred kilobytes after using the code
cleaner. Of course, make sure that you have kept a back-up copy of your
work.

I hope that helps.

Kevin
 
Kevin,

Excel 2002 cannot handle repeated subtotaling and removing
of subtotals. You may not need to do that often (if atl
all) when you are using a spreadsheet for information. but
when you are designing a spreadsheet, do the
subtotal/remove subtotal function more than twice, and it
crashes Excel (not just your workbook), something is
really wrong.

Microsoft knows about the error and according to one of
their Knowledge Base articles, "fixed" the problem in XL
2002 Service Pack 3. Only the fix isn't really a fix.

When I started discussing this with some of our techies,
they said they had run into even more egregious problems
with XL 2002, the worst being errors when importing or
exporting external data. All of the techies here who use
Excel a lot have "downgraded" to XL 2000 because of its
relative stability.

I have posted all of the above information in the
Worksheet Functions newsgroup, and didn't really want to
get into it here. My primary question for this board is:

What differences should I anticipate between XL 2000 and
XL 2002 when writing macros and designing management
reports?

"Working around" subtotals isn't really an option at this
point, because we are talking about 5000-7500 rows of data
that must be subtotaled by e.g. customer name. Pivot
tables are unacceptable to management because they cannot
drill down to detail.

And I don't attach my macros to the workbook itself. All
macros are stored in personal macro workbook, with code
then copied and pasted to a Word doc on the network for
everyone to use. Code is already clean.

The problem is NOT with the macros -- the problem was with
XL 2002.

Back to my original question: Now that I am working out of
Excel 2000, what problems or issues should I anticipate
for people who have Excel 2002 on their machines, besides
the ones I already know about? How do the two differ?

Best,

Denise.
Malvern, Pennsylvania
 
Denise,

<<And I don't attach my macros to the workbook itself. All
macros are stored in personal macro workbook, with code
then copied and pasted to a Word doc on the network for
everyone to use. Code is already clean.>>

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I'd still use Bovey's code cleaner. But
that is just me, having learned from experience.

In your original message, you wrote...

<<Since my machine has Excel 2000 on it, and all of my
bosses for whom the reports and macros are being generated
have Excel 2002, what conflicts can I expect in addition
to the ones mentioned above? It would be nice to be
prepared...>>

You might want to try posting your message in the
microsoft.public.excel.programming section. This section is not heavily
travelled. You are likely to get better responses to differences in macros
being XL 2000 and XL 2002 in that section.

Hope that helps.

Best regards,
Kevin
 
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