Excel crashing randomly

[bhorv67]

I have the latest version of Excel (2008) running on 4 different machines all running 10.5 with all the latest updates- what's happening is the program will crash (on all the machines at different times) haven't narrowed down what's causing the crash, but I've noticed if I have a file open, and I copy something to paste into another program- this will work one time. when I go back into Excel to copy a second field, the program will crash. I'm also finding other key commands are causing crashes- but it's not consistent.

Does anyone know of a fix? there's no updates from MS on the new office suite yet..

Very dissapointing- I would have thought MS would have spent more time testing the software...

suggestions.... anyone....

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I have the latest version of Excel (2008) running on 4 different machines all
running 10.5 with all the latest updates- what's happening is the program
will crash (on all the machines at different times) haven't narrowed down
what's causing the crash, but I've noticed if I have a file open, and I copy
something to paste into another program- this will work one time. when I go
back into Excel to copy a second field, the program will crash. I'm also
finding other key commands are causing crashes- but it's not consistent.<br>

Ugh. Intermittent or random problems are always difficult to diagnose or
fix.

Is the copy/paste/activate XL crash consistent, or is it also
intermittent?

Which method(s) of switching applications cause the crash (e.g.,
clicking on the XL window, using CMD-tab, clicking on the XL icon in the
dock, etc)?

Does this happen in a new user account?

Does it happen with *any* "another program" or just specific one(s)?

Does it happen with any workbook/worksheet open, or just specific
one(s)? Old (.xls) files? New (.xlsx)? or both?

Are you using a custom template?

Which "other key commands"?

Do you have any haxies running?

Does anyone know of a fix? there's no updates from MS on the new office suite
yet..

There aren't any updates yet. OTOH, it's only been 19 days since it was
released...

Very dissapointing- I would have thought MS would have spent more time
testing the software...<br>

FWIW, yours is the first report of anything like this that I've seen.

Given that, and that it's intermittent, it sounds like something special
about your configuration or other running apps. Doesn't necessarily mean
it's not a bug, just that it's unlikely MS can test for every possible
interaction.

 

[Mauricio]

I am experiencing the same thing. When copying a chart from an XML excel document and pasting it into Powerpoint, often times the paste operation will complete, but Excel will crash in the background. Quitting all office programs and restarting them does not fix the problem. Rebooting the computer does, at least temporarily.

In order to eliminate a number of possible factors, I created all the charts from scratch in Excel 2008, and pasted them into a presentation also created from scratch in Powerpoint 2008. The crashes keep happening.

On one bizarre occasion, the Excel document disappeared in the background, as if it had closed itself. It was not showing in the open documents window, and was nowhere to be found. When I reopened it, it appeared and let me keep working on it. After five minutes or so, a dialogue box appeared reading "The document abc.xlsx is already open. Reopening it will cause all changes to be discarded. Do you want to reopen abc.xlsx?" True to form, the only option was "OK." That is, do you want to lose your changes, or do you want to lose your changes? Sure enough, I lost them.

 

[Chris]

Every time I print Excel crashes is this basic function what MS intended, there is nothing unusual in the setup and everything is up to date, any clues?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Every time I print Excel crashes is this basic function what MS intended,
there is nothing unusual in the setup and everything is up to date, any
clues?

Does it happen in another user account? If you print to PDF?

Have you updated your print drivers?

 

[bhorv67]

I only have one user account on each machine.

In order to switch apps, I'm using cmd+tab. The crash seems to happen more often when I come back into Excel from the other app also using cmd+tab, and then trying to copy from the Excel doc (Excel will crash right away when i do that).

The copy/paste crash is more consistent than anything else- seems to happen all the time.

Not sure if the crash is affected by copying into other programs- have to try that.

So far, this is happening with Excel docs that were created in Office2004- maybe that has something to do with it....

Not using any custom templates

So far the copy/paste command is the only one I'm experiencing the issue with

Haxies? not familiar....

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I only have one user account on each machine.<br>

What happens when you create another account, and try to Copy/Paste?

 

[Chris]

I only have one user account. Everything is up to date re HP Printer drivers and I am using 10.5.1 on a Mcabook Pro that is 6/7 months old.

Excel crashes when printing to pdf as well either as a save to pdf or if printing to Adobe 8.0 print pdf driver.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I only have one user account. Everything is up to date re HP Printer drivers
and I am using 10.5.1 on a Mcabook Pro that is 6/7 months old.<br>
<br>
Excel crashes when printing to pdf as well either as a save to pdf or if
printing to Adobe 8.0 print pdf driver.

Does the same thing happen when you create another user account?

 

[Chris]

OK I have created a second user account and launched Excel 2008 in that user account, printed the same document and no crash!! So how do I get it to work in the main admin account???

For someone like Microsoft not to spot this for a product so long in the making is beyond me - I have been using these products since version 1a!!

 

[Todd Aton]

In the original user account, Open Excel and Select the Page Setup command
on the File menu. What item is selected in the Print quality list? If it¹s
Normal, select 300 dpi or High, print your workbook and tell me what
happens.

Todd Aton, SDET
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided ³AS IS² with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Todd Aton]

Is this what you¹re trying to do?

1. Copy a selection in Excel.
2. CMD+TAB to another application.
3. Paste.
4. CMD+TAB back to Excel.
5. Copy a selection in Excel.

....and then you crash?

Are there missing steps? What application are you pasting into?

Thanks,

Todd Aton, SDET
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided ³AS IS² with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[bhorv67]

Reply to Todd Aton-

yes, the steps you describe are exactly what I'm doing, and then the program crashes.

I haven't narrowed down which program I'm copying into as being an issue- but I do notice that it will happen when I'm copying install keys into program installers (I keep all my install keys in an Excel doc for my entire office). I do know this happens while copying into other programs, but I just can't remember which ones cause the issue more than others.

One thing I can tell you, is I've notice this happens mostly when working with an Excel doc that was created in Office 2004. I don't believe there's an issue with Excel files created in 2008- but I may be wrong.

 

[Mauricio]

For me it is even simpler:

1) Select Excel chart
2) Command Tab to Powerpoint
3) Paste on slide - at this point, the Excel spreadsheet disappears from the background.
4) Command Tab to Excel - at this point, Excel crashes.

This usually happens after a while of going back and forth between Excel and Powerpoint, not immediately after opening the file. Once I get the first crash, however, Excel will crash on each successive relaunch. Rebooting the computer temporarily solves the problem.

 

[uberhiker]

Todd,
I'm getting the same copy/paste crashes in Excel--even copying within
the program itself. I'm running 10.5 with a 1.8ghz MacBook Pro w/2GB
RAM.

On another note. Performance overall is terribly slow. Sometimes it
can take 30 seconds to open up an Office program. This in comparison
to Office 2003 on a 700Mhz Pentium 3 which opens literally instantly
(as does 2003 under Parallels). Charting in Excel is slow as well with
a 1-2 second input delay on newly added data that is being charted. My
old PowerBook 5300c (117Mhz) could run excel spreadsheets FAR faster
than this--especially dynamically charting data--and I made great use
of it in science classes back in high school. As hard as it is to
believe, Excel runs faster on a 117Mhz PowerBook with 24MB Ram than
and 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 2GB RAM!

While I can deal with the slower speed. The crashing is making Office
2008 all but unusable in a work environment. Here's hoping MASSIVE
fixes are coming really soon.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Is the copy/paste/activate XL crash consistent, or is it also
intermittent?

FWIW John, I see it all the time as well.
Not 100% reproducible, but almost 50%.

Excel also crashes quite frequently importing .csv files.

Corentin

 

[Chris]

Todd thank you for your input on Excel crashing immediately after printing in primary user account. I have tried setting it from default value of high to 600dpi or normal and in all three instances it crashes, so perhaps this is not the solution.

 

[Really Angry!]

I am having the same issues and it happens every time I am in the file. I have a spreadsheet using one of the handy new layouts designed for managing a checking account. When I click on the drop down menu in the sheet to select a category for my transaction the file crashes.

 

[DR]

I am also experiencing frequent Excel crashes when trying to copy and paste from Excel 2008 to PowerPoint 2008. It happens most frequently when I copy from Excel and Paste into PowerPoint as a PDF.

This is very frustrating!

 

[QMS]

I am also experiencing random crashing of Excel, but I do not even cut and paste.
I will be entering data then all of a sudden it will just close down losing the data.