Glitches with Excel in Leopard

[JE McGimpsey]

I am having problems with Excel 2008 on 10.5.1 PPC. It does not remember the
cell formats from closing and opening the file.<br>
<br>
Hopefully someone can reproduce the problem. When I create a new document and
have the format be for consecutive columns be: date (centered), general
(centered), accounting, accounting, accounting. After closing the file and
opening it up again the date format column is all of a sudden accounting.<br>

I can't reproduce this, though I've seen some strange number format
issues.

Do the dates already entered into the date column actually change to
accounting values, or is the problem just with blank cells in the date
column?

Does the problem persist if you uncheck the Extend data range formats
and formulas checkbox in Preferences/Edit?

Are you using a custom template to create your workbook?

Should I uninstall Office 2004? It isn't a trial version so I didn't think it
would be necessary...<br>

It's not necessary.

 

[Bertrand]

It is just the empty cells which do not remember the formatting.

I did not use a custom template to create this workbook.

Was your test machine also a PPC or Intel - just curious.

Thanks for the prompt repsonse

 

[CowboyCopas]

Just got my first Mac since buying my very first computer - an Osborne! Remember those? Well, here's the deal. I have a B4350 Mono Laser Printer made by OKI. Used it with a PC till December of 2006 when I disconnected it, set it on a shelf and forgot about it. I want to use it with the Imac and MS Word (Office Student Teacher) so I hooked it up. I retrieved the current driver from Oki's site and opened with Stuffit Expander. All good. I opened my doc, issued the command to print and noting happens. It did print a test page with one line of gobbledygoook text. Hmmm - uncool. So, I looked to see what the status of te job was. Mac says its in the cued-up and ready to go. So, I hit print again. Still no good. Now I Have two print jobs cued up, but now the details box says that they are "printing". Not true, of course. So, I conclude that since the printer sees the Mac (I can tell by its display) and the Mac sees the printer, that things should be working. Still, bad USB cables can do weird things, so I attach a new one. No good - still no printing. It occurs to me (a long shot I know) that maybe the Imac needed a restart as a result of the new driver. I restarted - no good, still no workee! I'm prone to violence against machines, so I decided to go away for a day or two and see if a solution presented itself to my mind. So far, nothing has ocurred to me. I also need to create a Cash-Flow spreadsheet in Excel, so I am double-secret worried that I'm about to have trouble with it as well if the previous posts are any indication of what I can expect. I'm a Texan (from a very rural area) posted to beautiful Northern CA. I love CA, but go nuts on computers and peripherals that resist my will. Can anyone offer advice that will help me avoid doing violence to valuable stuff I can't really afford to smash with a baseball bat?

Muchas gracias!

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Just got my first Mac since buying my very first computer - an Osborne!
Remember those? Well, here's the deal. I have a B4350 Mono Laser Printer made
by OKI. Used it with a PC till December of 2006 when I disconnected it, set it
on a shelf and forgot about it. I want to use it with the Imac and MS Word
(Office Student Teacher) so I hooked it up. I retrieved the current driver
from Oki's site and opened with Stuffit Expander. All good. I opened my doc,
issued the command to print and noting happens. It did print a test page with
one line of gobbledygoook text. Hmmm - uncool. So, I looked to see what the
status of te job was. Mac says its in the cued-up and ready to go. So, I hit
print again. Still no good. Now I Have two print jobs cued up, but now the
details box says that they are "printing". Not true, of course. So, I conclude
that since the printer sees the Mac (I can tell by its display) and the Mac
sees the printer, that things should be working. Still, bad USB cables can do
weird things, so I attach a new one. No good - still no printing. It occurs to
me (a long shot I know) that maybe the Imac needed a restart as a result of
the new driver. I restarted - no good, still no workee! I'm prone to violence
against machines, so I decided to go away for a day or two and see if a
solution presented itself to my mind. So far, nothing has ocurred to me. I
also need to create a Cash-Flow spreadsheet in Excel, so I am double-secret
worried that I'm about to have trouble with it as well if the previous posts
are any indication of what I can expect. I'm a Texan (from a very rural area)
posted to beautiful Northern CA. I love CA, but go nuts on computers and
peripherals that resist my will. Can anyone offer advice that will help me
avoid doing violence to valuable stuff I can't really afford to smash with a
baseball bat?

Muchas gracias!

I¹ll try. First, for the printer. You said it is connected via USB right?
Can you print with TextEdit which is in the applications folder? Do you get
any errors when trying to print? Is the printer paused? Have you restarted
of repaired permissions after you installed Oki¹s drivers?

For Excel, I think the others are having very different problems than you
might have. There ought to be a couple of built in templates that will help
you get started. Try it, and try really hard to post back here with any
problems before you pick up any tool of mass destruction.

 

[David Arnold]

I've got two new issues:

1) Leopard on a PPC Quad - Excel crashes when attempting to print no matter what printer is selected or even if generate a PDF is selected - prints fine on a Leopard MBP

2) Basing a calculation on the Grand Total of a pivot table doesn't update the calculation when the pivot table is updated (Calc now doesn't work either). Starting a new document from scratch doesn't have this problem.

 

[Jimmy_Mack]

I went back and forth with Microsort tech support regarding the keystroking issue with Excel in Leopard trying to solve the problem. Simply put, Excel does not accept keystrokes in Leopard, and is virtually unusable. Microsoft's position is that it is a Mac OS issue.

My solution is I bought Apple iWork and use their Numbers application which works very well on Leopard, is very similar to Excel, and is much cheaper than Office Suite. You can also open its documents in Excel.

 

[studentessa]

This is the first problem I've have with my little leopard baby:

Every time I try to run spell check in Excel 2004, Excel either quits unexpectedly or I get the spinning beach ball. I haven't been able to spell check my entire spreadsheet once. And if I try to do it little by little, saving every so often, Excel quits unexpectedly while I'm trying to save.

I'm tearing my hair out, here. Can anyone offer advice?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

This is the first problem I've have with my little leopard baby:<br>
<br>
Every time I try to run spell check in Excel 2004, Excel either quits
unexpectedly or I get the spinning beach ball. I haven't been able to spell
check my entire spreadsheet once. And if I try to do it little by little,
saving every so often, Excel quits unexpectedly while I'm trying to save.<br>
<br>
I'm tearing my hair out, here. Can anyone offer advice?

Does this happen with all workbooks, or only one?

Do you have a custom dictionary set?

Do you have mixed languages in your workbook?

 

[jetlag11]

 

[jetlag11]

NumLock doesn't work in Excel with Leopard. The numeric keypad on my external Microsoft keyboard doesn't work in Excel, nor does the numeric pad on my MacBook (that F5 should activate).

NumLock &amp; the number pads work like they always have on other apps, including Word 2004, AppleWorks 6, and Mail. Strangely, the number pads work in Excel also, but only to let me add numbers to a password dialog to open a worksheet. NumLock dies as soon as that dialog goes away.

(I'm also encountering the periodic keyboard freezes in Excel -only- that others have reported.)

Weird. Are others having problems with NumLock and the numbers keypad? Does Excel 2008 fix this?

MacBook (2GHz Core Duo), MacOS 10.5.1 w. keyboard firmware update, Excel 2004 (current updates), Intellitype Pro 6.2 (for the external keyboard).

JL

 

[jetlag11]

Sorry for the double post.

JL

 

[Jim]

I am not sure if this is related, but I have Excel 2004 for mac on a new imac intel. The shortcut I use a ton, to switch between open windows doesn't work. I even confirmed in the help that it is still part of excel 2004. the shortcut is ⌘-tilde (~). However, it doesn't work. Instead it shows the formulas for all of the cells.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I am not sure if this is related, but I have Excel 2004 for mac on a new imac
intel. The shortcut I use a ton, to switch between open windows doesn't work.
I even confirmed in the help that it is still part of excel 2004. the
shortcut is ⌘-tilde (~). However, it doesn't work. Instead it shows the
formulas for all of the cells.<br>
<br>
Any suggestions? Thanks.

The default shortcuts are

CMD-` Switch windows within an application

CTRL-` Toggle between displaying results & formulae

where ` is the accent grave on the same key as the tilde on US keyboards.

Did you reassign the shortcuts?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

NumLock doesn't work in Excel with Leopard. The numeric keypad on my external
Microsoft keyboard doesn't work in Excel, nor does the numeric pad on my
MacBook (that F5 should activate).<br>
<br>
NumLock &amp; the number pads work like they always have on other apps,
including Word 2004, AppleWorks 6, and Mail. Strangely, the number pads work
in Excel also, but only to let me add numbers to a password dialog to open a
worksheet. NumLock dies as soon as that dialog goes away.<

Don't have a external Microsoft keyboard, but I have no problem with F6
(not F5) as NumLock on my MacBook Pro with XL04 or XL08.

 

[jetlag11]

After reading MVP's reply, I remembered that old trouble maker, corrupted preferences. I trashed some Apple keyboard prefs and some Excel 10 prefs and the MS keyboard prefs. The number keys now work correctly. Of course I had to restore a lot of stuff.

If I had done this scientifically, I'd know which one was the culprit, but it's nice that it works.

However, I think the keyboard freeze is still there. It's happened once with the fresh prefs; it may just have been a disc operation.

JL

 

[Jason R.]

Every time I print Excel '08 crashes. It happens no matter how many worksheets or cells I print. Also, doesn't matter what brand of printer or connection type (network or wired) same result. I have tried reinstalling and encounter the same issue. Any suggestions?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Every time I print Excel '08 crashes. It happens no matter how many
worksheets or cells I print. Also, doesn't matter what brand of printer or
connection type (network or wired) same result. I have tried reinstalling and
encounter the same issue. Any suggestions?

Reinstalling is nearly always a complete waste of time - applications
just don't corrupt very frequently.

OTOH, preferences do sometimes corrupt, as do files.

Does the crash happen only with this workbook? or does it happen with a
newly created one?

You can try, with Office apps closed, deleting these files:

~:Libraryreferences:com.microsoft.office.plist

and

~:Libraryreferences:com.microsoft.Excel.plist

 

[Shirley C Miller]

Are all of you people trying to tell me that Microsoft Excel
is not what I want to use? How can I bypass it and use the old
2004 Excel?

Shirley M

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Are all of you people trying to tell me that Microsoft Excel
is not what I want to use? How can I bypass it and use the old
2004 Excel?

Shirley M

³All of us people²? I think Excel 2008 is what you should be using. The ONLY
reason to use Excel 2004 is if you have VBA macros that are required, and do
not wish to convert them to Apple Script or XLM. Both Excel 2004 and 2008
can coexist on the same machine without any problems.

 

[REECO]

Bob, please don't be so inclusive. ALL of us do not think Excel 2008 is something that one should buy right now. The program is in beta mode. It so happens you have to pay for their research. Another Microsoft slam at Mac.
Ronnie