Flakey column width problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter D Warcken
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D Warcken

I had, I hope, a temporary problem with Excel today. I've been using
this computer and program for about a year at my job. It has Windows 98
and Office (Excel) 97 and I have not had any problems with it at all
until the past few weeks. Our IS updates things on our computers from
time to time and we recently had some network printing software and
cables installed.

I opened a file that has multiple worksheets (7). Using the Edit menu,
I created a copy of the last sheet and moved it to the end. The columns
in the new worksheet were all wrong (much narrower than in the
original). I deleted that worksheet and tried again 2 or 3 more times
with the same result. I closed and reopened the file. Now ALL the
original worksheets had narrower columns. I selected all of them and
fixed them all and saved. When I closed and reopened the file the
columns were again narrower than they were supposed to be. I did this
several times, even entering some text in one of the cells. The text
was saved but not the column width formatting. I opened a new file and
changed some of the column widths to something other than the default.
When I closed and opened this test file it also had changed to narrower
columns on the ones I had changed. I also tried Save As and doing the
same operations with the copied file. Same result....I closed all the
files including the original one, leaving the columns narrow. I
restarted the computer and, lo and behold, the column widths in my
original file had reverted to the original (correct) widths even though
I had closed and saved them in the incorrect configuration. What do you
suppose was going on? I asked our IS if the problem could be RAM or
harddrive related. They didn't think so. Should we reinstall Excel?
Another person in the office had the same problem a few weeks ago and
it has not resolved itself.

I have had two other problems with this program recently. A couple of
times a "double document" icon (looked like two little pieces of paper
stuck to the arrow cursor) has appeared attached to the cursor and
there didn't seem to be any way to get rid of it or even to find out
what it was. I asked several people in the office and no one knew what
it was. We eventually had to do the Control/Alt./Delete to quit Excel
(that worked). The other problem only happened once. I had about 50
worksheets in one file and it would not let me make another one. Using
the Edit menu I tried to copy a sheet and place it at the end of the
worksheets. When I clicked OK it closed the menu window but did not
create an additional sheet. I couldn't find anywhere where it said
there was a limit on the number of sheets and, in any case, I have
another file that has the exact same sheets (except for the data) that
has 93 worksheets.

Any insight and/or solutions would be appreciated.

Deborah Warcken
 
About the column problem:

Some posters say that upgrading to SR2 helps. But others have said that it had
no effect. You can check to see what version of xl97 you're running under
Help|about.

The double document icon: It kind of sounds like it's the cursor you get when
you click (or ctrl-click) on a worksheet tab to move (or copy) to a new location
in the workbook.

Maybe the mouse stuck down. Without being too harsh, try gently banging on the
mouse keys--include the scroll wheel button, too.

Maybe even gently bang on the keyboard (maybe the ctrl keys are stuck).

But be careful--don't break anything.
 
Thank you for the suggestions. Upgrades are completely at the
discretion of the IS department (and they won't acknowledge the problem
and are not Excel users). I'd love to hear from anyone who's had this
problem and has solved it. In the archives (Google Groups) I found 3 or
4 similar questions going back to 2000 but no solutions were posted...

Re: the double document icon - that's what I thought (and still think)
it is. I just need to know the "secret" to getting it to let go. I
tried every key, key combination and location for this. No luck.
Perhaps if I knew it's MS official name, I could find it in the help
section.....

Thanks again.
 
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