Problems designing combo boxes in forms in Excel 2003

[Mikhalis]

To anyone who can help me:

I am using the English version of Excel 2003 (Students' and Teachers'
version), running on a Toshiba laptop with Windows XP Media version (Italian)
installed.

I am encountering difficulties using Combo Boxes and List Boxes I have
designed for a spreadsheet that I use for recording my expenses, bank
transactions and budget.

I have designed a form to make it easy to pick dates, amounts and items from
lists, and transfer the choices made to appropriate cells in the spreadsheet.

However, using a Combo Box or Text Box to enter a figure onto the
spreadsheet often causes the program to "hang". I then have to do
Alt-Ctrl-Del and in the task manager window, terminate the application.

Some time ago when this happened, Microsoft determined that I needed to
update Windows and Excel 2003 and led me to one of their sites to enable me
to update, which I duly did. But the problem persists.

I may say that I originally developed this spreadsheet on Windows 98, using
Excel 97. There were no problems except for my programming mistakes which I
corrected as time went by.

But when I started using the old spreadsheet on my new laptop, error
messages suggesting I needed to have MS Access installed appeared. However,
the Students' and Teachers' version of Office 2003 does not include Access.

As a test, I took my Excel 2003 personal finance spreadsheet to work, where
we have a version of XP Professional (English) installed. It worked perfectly.

So I wonder whether there is a compatibility problem between the Italian
version of the operating system (XP Media) and the English version of Excel
2003.

I'd be most grateful for any advice on this problem.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Ivy

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

It is unclear what led you to believe that Access must be installed. Are you
using a control in your userform that is distributed with Excel, like the
Calendar control?

 

[Mikhalis]

Dear Tom,

Thanks very much for your reply. No, as far as I am aware, I am only using
controls supplied with Excel: those which appear in VBA mode when you design
a form.

The problem with Access was some time ago, when I was using a version of the
spreadsheet which I had developed on an older computer running Windows 98 SE
and which was part of the Microsoft Office 97 suite.

Now I am using Excel 2003 and have redesigned the Excel workbook from
scratch. When the program hangs, there are no error messages; the program
just refuses to respond.

The program does not seem to like accepting numbers, especially with decimal
separators.

I'd be very grateful for any help on this one.

Yours,

Mikhalis

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

I would look in the temp directory and any subordinate directories of the
temp directory and delete and files with the extension .exd.

C:\Documents and Settings\OgilvyTW\Local Settings\Temp\

C:\Documents and Settings\OgilvyTW\Local Settings\Temp\VBE

C:\Documents and Settings\OgilvyTW\Local Settings\Temp\Excel8.0

are examples where I would look on my computer.

 

[Mikhalis]

Thank you very much Tom. I will try your suggestion and get back to you.

Yours,

Mikhalis

 

[Mikhalis]

Dear Tom Ogilvy,

Could this be a possible file to delete:

RefEdit.exd

In C:\Documents and Settings\Mikhalis\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms

Is it safe to delete it? What do *.exd files do?

Kind regards and thanks once again,

Mikhalis

 

[Dave Peterson]

I'm not Tom...

But I closed excel
Renamed that file to RefEdit.exdXXXX
And restarted excel
then I added a userform and a refedit box to that userform.

There was a new RefEdit.exd file added to that folder.

So you can delete it if you want, but excel will put it back when it needs it.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

And that is the point. When it is replaced by Excel, it is a good version.

Rule of thumb is that anything in the temp directory and its sub directories
can be deleted (except if it is actually in use and you will be warned in
that case).

And yes, close all Office applications before doing it.

 

[Mikhalis]

Dear Dave and Tom,

Thank you both very much for your advice. I will try it out and report back.
It would be such a shame if you couldn't use all of Excel's functionality.

Yours,

Mikhalis

 

[Dave Peterson]

You're right. I shouldn't have used "if you want" in my response.

But this file isn't in the Temp folder. I would take some precautions when the
file isn't in that Temp folder. (Rename or move the file, then test, then
either put it back or delete that renamed/moved file).