Solver Crashes Excel

[oslothecat]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Started happening occasionally a few months ago, now it happens every time I select "Solver" from the drop down menu and the rest of the Data Analysis tools are starting to act up.

I uninstalled and reinstalled all add-ins, went into Disk Utility and ran a repair, and checked for updates (I have 10.4.11).

I've seen this problem on a lot of older forums -- is there a fix for it? Please say yes.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Started happening occasionally a few months ago, now it happens every time I
select "Solver" from the drop down menu and the rest of the Data Analysis
tools are starting to act up.

I uninstalled and reinstalled all add-ins, went into Disk Utility and ran a
repair, and checked for updates (I have 10.4.11).

I've seen this problem on a lot of older forums -- is there a fix for it?
Please say yes.

You say you're using XL2004, but your version number is for XL v.X,
which do you have?

Does the same thing happen in a fresh MacOSX user account? If so, your
preferences may be corrupted.

 

[oslothecat]

May need to update what I have as my version of excel...i think it's 97-2003.

I have not tried to set up a second user account, but will give that a shot as soon as I get home.

If preferences are corrupted, is it possible for me to fix this myself? And how can I avoid this in the future?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

May need to update what I have as my version of excel...i think it's 97-2003.

I have not tried to set up a second user account, but will give that a shot
as soon as I get home.

If preferences are corrupted, is it possible for me to fix this myself? And
how can I avoid this in the future?

The easiest way to fix it is to trash them - either the specific excel
preferences or the entire

~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft:

folder. Do it with all Office apps closed. When you next start an Office
app, the prefs will be recreated with default settings.

As far as prevention - I don't know that there's much that can be done -
while they can be stable for months, occasionally they seem to go off
the rails. The biggest culprit is usually an application crash.

 

[oslothecat]

just gave myself a crash-course on preferences and plists, and i'm putting odds on this being the problem. safari and other apps have been experiencing a growing number of 'unexpected quits' now that i think about it.

so other than trashing the preferences for microsoft (and while i'm at it i assume i should do safari as well?) do you have any other words of wisdom/warning? this sounds too easy and i'm afraid of trashing something important and making it worse.