Why does my formula bar disappear?

[Tom Kerley]

I have used every version of Excel since it was first released and have
never had a problem like this. For no reason I can identify, when I
launch Excel the formula bar will be missing. The "formula bar" contains
the Name Box, Cancel button, Enter button, Calculator button, and
Formula Bar. This only happens randomly and rarely but has happened
multiple times. It has happened on all 3 of my Macs.

One machine is an iMac Rev. A, OS 9.0.4, 256MB; one is a 9600/233, OS
9.1, 512MB; the other is a G4/400, 9.2, 768MB. Office 2001 is on all the
boxes with 30,000K allotted to Excel. I should also mention that this
had happened on the iMac and 9600 before they were updated to OS 9.x and
both were running 8.6.

I cannot find any way under Tools > Customize to restore the formula bar
because I absolutely cannot find it or any of its components. The only
way I can restore the bar is to go to Preferences > Microsoft and copy
the Microsoft Office Settings, Excel Settings, and Excel Toolbars files
from one computer to the offending machine. In fact, I keep a Zip disk
handy with those files on it for a quick "restore" since they all have
the same toolbar configuration.

Any idea what is going on? Any hints as to where I can find the default
formula bar and/or any of the default stuff on the bar? I have a highly
customized Standard tool bar and resetting the toolbars is an option I
don't want use. Not having the formula bar absolutely makes Excel
unusable since I cannot see or edit any of my formulas or functions and
cannot use the Name Bar to quickly access named areas of my spreadsheets.

Tom

[J.E. McGimpsey]

Not sure what's going on - there's nothing I found in the MS Knowledge
Base or the group archives, except one similar message back in June
that had no successful resolution.

However, there's a couple of things I'd suggest trying:

First, the Formula Bar preference is in Edit/Preferences/View. Check
the Formula Bar checkbox. Setting that should get your formula bar
back.

However, since the disappearance is not consistent, I'd trash the Excel
Settings (9) file, with XL closed, then starting up, setting the
Formula Bar preference to on, if necessary, and closing XL again. This
will force XL to write a new pref file.

If that doesn't clear the problem up, it may be worth trashing the
Excel Toolbars preference and rebuilding your standard toolbar.

Don't know if a corrupt file could cause this, but it would be worth
keeping a log, just in case. Are you opening any files with macros that
could turn off the formula bar? (and have you done a virus scan?)

Since it's happening on all 3 machines, I suspect the problem is being
transferred when you "restore" your settings. While I don't know that
anything is likely to break by copying Excel Settings or Office
Settings between computers (I'd think that Toolbars should not cause a
problem), I'd make a backup of each (reset) preference file rather than
just 1 common one.

HTH

In article <3BECB7E9...@hcis.net>, Tom Kerley <tke...@hcis.net>
wrote:

[Tom Kerley]

J.E.

Thanks for the suggestions and information. At least now I know
(remember) where the Formula Bar selection is. Of course, the Formula
Bar is already selected in Edit > Preferences > View.

In the past, I have trashed the prefs for Excel settings and Excel
Toolbars and gone through the pain of setting up my Standard Bar again.
It has not seemed to make any difference.

I do not use macros and will not open any file I receive that does. I
run antivirus software on all the computers and do an additional
complete hard drive scan for viruses once a month.

The thing that is really disquieting about this problem is that all 3
machines have their own custom installations of their own copies of
Office - not 3 installs of the same copy. Each registration is
different, each work environment is different (one is my wife's, one is
my home computer, and the other is at work), 2 of them run Excel Add-ins
and FuncRes while the other does not, and each runs a different set of
other hardware and software. Yet the SAME problem is happening on all 3
of them.

I back up all the computers remotely and originally sought out the
backed up prefs for the particular computer for the restore. Using a
common prefs file has not seemed to make any difference at all and works
just fine.

This problem never occurred before upgrading to Office 2001.

Tom