Sort Menu Item Disabled in all workbooks

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Parsells
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim Parsells

Office Pro 2003, SP3 -- Excel.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Data-->Sort item is permanently
disabled on my PC. This is true for old workbooks and newly created
workbooks.
The Toolbar sort buttons work just fine.
I do a fair amount of VBA development, but have done very little lately.
I have no protected or locked workbooks/worksheets/cells at all, I just
don't use those features.
I have restarted both Excel and the computer to no effect.
I did do a Help --> Detect and Repair which ran thru the "Setup Complete"
stage and then disappeared.
Any suggestions will be welcomed.
 
This problem ONLY occurs when I am logged in as the username that I normally
use. Other usernames do not demonstrate the problem.
 
Additional information.
When Excel is started in Safe mode (holding Ctl key down when starting), the
problem goes away.
When Personal.xls is deleted, the problem remains.
Adding the standard Add-ins to Excel when running under an unaffected
username, does not cause the problem reoccur.
I have no Addins not included with Excel and, if any, VSTO.
I do have VS2008 with VSTO 2008 installed under my primary username and have
played with it (very lightly). The installation of VS2008 is fairly new, but
I believe that Data-->Sort worked after that.
The "playing" with VSTO2008 is much more recent and MAY have occured in the
timeframe when Data-->Sort became disabled. However, as I said, the "playing"
was very light and certainly did not attempt to do anything to the Excel menu
strip or ToolBars.

I do some programmatic Sorting in VBA code. The Sort code was generated by
recording a Macro. This was also done in about the timeframe that Data-->Sort
became disabled. Once the in-code Sort was in place and working, I did not
have much cause to use Data-->Sort, so I might not have noticed that it was
disabled.

To round off the info, I am running XP SP2, fully patched.
 
The Sort functionality still works, both from the Toolbar buttons and
programmatically.

The problem is in the Main menu:

File Edit ..... Data ....
Sort
The Sort Menu Item was obviously still functional when I first recorded the
VBA macro, I did try a System Restore back to the day before I added the
Macro. No joy and no effect aside from breaking my anti-virus.

My playing with VSTO was limited to starting a project and adding a
DataSource to that project. I never got around to addding code. It is
interesting, but probably not relevant that the DataSource was the same one
that underlies the WorkBook that I added the Sort macro to.

Is anybody listening? Does anyone have a thought about how to proceed from
here?
 
Problem is solved, but the original cause is still unknown.
To solve,
Tools-->Customize-->Commands-->Select Data-->Rearrange Commands-->
Select Data then Reset.

This clears up the problem.
In two of two known cases, the problem occurs on machines with VSTO installed.
 
Slight correction:
Tools-->Customize-->Commands-->Select Data-->Rearrange Commands-->
Select Data -->Sort then Reset.
In other words, reset the Sort command.
 
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