I have the following problem in Excel:
I wasdevelopping a template in Excel VBA. I was tearing a sub routine in break mode and tried to stop it to change the code. When I pressed the stop button, however, Excel froze so I had to kill the process. Although before the crash everything was ok, opening the file would cause excel to freeze and crash again. Obviously the file got corrupt. I used a previous version of the file and decided to redo the changes. At some point the problem happened again. When I finally managed to open the file, everything seemed ok, but pressing the "developer tools" button on the ribbon crashes excel. I desperate. The Template is 90% but making even the slightest change feels like disarming a mine bomb that can blow the template up.
Does anyone know how to bypass the problem?
Here is what I would suggest:
get another PC with the same version of Excel installed,
Install the VBA CodeClener Add-in (http://www.appspro.com/Utilities/CodeCleaner.htm),
Copy your (prior) spreadsheet over to that PC, open it, open developer tools and run CodeCleaner.
Add your changes.
If that works, then reinstall Excel on your first PC. If not then you will have to take drastic measures:
Open the prior version,
Make one (or a few) change at a time,
After each small set of changes, save a new version of your Excel file, adding a version number to the file name (update the version/file name each time)
If it fails again, go back to the previous version, and the try to figure out which of the small set of changes may have corrupted the file.
Related
I have a Utilities file which contains a number of macros which I use a lot. My old Excel loads this file on launch, but does not show the window. This is exactly the desired behaviour.
However I recently updated my Excel (16.56 on Big Sur) and now, when Excel launches, the window shows.
Is there any way to make it be invisible? I've tried deleting all the worksheets but Excel won't let me. Googling is throwing up scads of completely useless hits and nothing here seems to be relevent, either.
OK, so after much more Googling, I found the answer. Menu item Window -> Hide. Then quit Excel, answering Yes to save the file. On relaunch it opens invisibly.
Since upgrading to Excel 365, my company has been having all sorts of trouble with VBA-supported Excel workbooks crashing or not functioning properly. The issues have popped up in various workbooks and various departments, including seemingly simple VBA workbooks. I've discovered a fix (see below) but it's not sustainable.
The Issues
The various issues we have experienced are listed below. Note, these issues only occur when you open a file in Excel 365 desktop. The same files, when opened in the Excel 365 browser app or in Excel 2016 will work fine. Also, all these issues happen at random. A user may have been working in a file for weeks and then the next time they open the file they get one of these errors.
"Can't find project or library" errors even when we are using the standard set of libraries and basic VBA. Then when you open the VBA Editor window, all the VBA screens are essentially frozen up and the library list is inaccessible.
Excel hard crashes or locks up when opening these files and enabling VBA. Note, the crash only occurs when the VBA is enabled. If you open a file without enabling VBA, it will work fine (though obviously you can't use any of the code).
The file opens seemingly fine, but the VBA doesn't work and once again, everything is locked up when you access the VBA editor window.
"unhandled win32 exception occurred" error
when executing a command, getting an error 32809 which seems to indicate the compiled VBA has been corrupted
The Fix
Opening the VBA Editor window, then selecting Debug -> Compile VBAProject seemingly fixes the issue. I've yet to experience any of the above issues where the file had been manually compiled this way. The problem with this is that every time you add code to a file or any time you add a new tab to a file, you have to go in and perform this manual compile again.
Yes, apparently adding a single tab in a file changes the workbook structure enough that it is necessary to compile again. The Compiled VBAProject selection will be greyed out. But adding a tab (or adding new VBA) will un-grey it and require another manual compile or the problems start occurring again.
This fix also works to repair files where the above issues are occurring. To fix those files, you can:
Make sure "Disable Trusted Documents" and "Disable VBA macros with notification" are toggled on in your security settings so that VBA doesn't automatically run when you open a file.
Open the file with the errors but do not enable the VBA.
Go to the VBA Editor window, select Debug -> Compile VBAProject.
Save the file, close it, reopen it, enable the VBA, and everything works fine again.
But again, this isn't sustainable because all my users will have to remember to go compile VBA any time they add a new tab to a workbook.
Help?
Has anyone found a more sustainable fix to this issue? Is there a bug with the Excel 365 Desktop automatic compiler that Microsoft is working on?
I think I perhaps found an answer in this thread:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/814ac2ce-ab45-45dc-8c6a-8ef0775d189a/excel-64bit-crashes-when-activating-macros-but-excel-32bit-does-not?forum=exceldev&prof=required
Per that thread – “the cause is that Excel does not correctly save the compile state of the VBA code and 64 bit Excel cannot recover from that issue when opening the afflicted Excel file (32 bit usually can). A fix was released for only Excel 2016 and not for other versions". That would indeed confirm that it is a bug within Excel and explains why we only see the issue with 365 64 bit Excel.
That also explains why my manual compile fix works. Based on the article I found, there is a more sustainable fix. You can change Excel’s registry and force VBA to compile accurately.
To implement the permanent fix:
Open the start menu and type “reg” and select the “Registry Editor”
Navigate to: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\options
On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type ForceVBALoadFromSource, and then press Enter.
In the Details pane, right-click ForceVBALoadFromSource, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
I am using VBA in most of my office 365 applications for many years now. Last week an error appeared that I can't fix anymore, without having to create a new profile in windows (according to Microsoft helpdesk). Besides that this is quiet a lot of work that I would like to avoid, if this is the only solution, I like to know what happened and why, to prevent future errors.
Problem: in any office 365 application, when opening the vba editor, in the taskbar, a window appears that I cannot open and that looks like a corrupted editor window. Hence I cannot edit my code anymore. The code is runnable though from the developers-macros-run-menu.
Cause: I ran a code from ms-word, that saves the pages from a merged document into separte files, .docx and .pdf. The code was running fine, but after a little editing started to quit before the last page was reached and after some time trying over, I couldn't open the editor anymore. I am not sure if this error is caused by the code, or something else.
Unfortunately I cannot display the code here, because I can't open it anymore.
I updated Office 365 to the last version, without any result.
Creating a new Windows-account solves the problem, but implies that I have to reinstall many apps and services.
Does anyone have had the same experience, what is the problem and/ or what can I do to restore this error other than the new-account solution?
The VBA Editor window moved off screen. This might have been caused by accidentally pressing WINDOWS KEY + SHIFT + ARROW (not likely), or by a problem in windows 10.
For a solution see https://superuser.com/q/53585
I'd the same problem.
That´s just a question of hidden windows. Just press shift and left click on top of the code window in the task bar. Then select maximze and your window will appear.
Hope it helps.
Joao
Excel crashes when opening files that contain a userform
This is a known problem with a known solution workaround which is to delete a file called Excel.box from here:
C:\Users\SlowLearner\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms\Excel.box
According to this forum post the purpose of the Excel.box (& Word.box) file is:
Files such as Winword.box and Excel.box are associated with the
Control Toolbox you see when you are designing a UserForm in the
Visual Basic editor. The files contain information about the layout of
the Control Toolbox (additional tab pages, controls that have been
added or removed, custom icons, ...) If a user has never modified the
Control Toolbox in any way, there will probably be no .box file. By
deleting a .box file, you will restore the Control Toolbox to its
default (factory preset) configuration - this is the only way to do
that. Sometimes, the .box file becomes corrupted and must be deleted.
There are no negative side effects to deleting it.
Unfortunately Excel.box returns :(
It would seem that for most users the problem is fixed by deleting the file, sadly not for me.
I'd like to understand what is causing this problem to recur. A few points to note:
this (touch wood) is not impacting MS Word on my PC
I am using Office 2010, 64 bit version on Win10
I have not made any conscious change to form settings
if I delete the file > start Excel > UN-DELETE the file: everything works :-/
some other experiences with this issue here
For the time being I'll just check for and delete the file before launching Excel, but this is hardly an acceptable solution for the long term. Appreciate thoughts for a proper fix... TIA
Additional Information:
I have not fully explored the crash but so far it happens when:
starting the application by opening an xl?.m file with a userform
application does not get past the splash screen
crashes with the application's CRASH screen (... encounted an error...)
starting the application with a blank worksheet then adding a userform
crashes immediately with the applications CRASH screen displayed (see below)
The above crash happened after rebooting my PC, had a chance to explore it some more.
First I opened the file I had been working on (contains userforms):
annoyingly it opened without crashing
I did NOT enter the IDE
I closed the file (Excel closed normally)
Then I created a new worksheet
I opened the VBA IDE
right-click 'add UserForm' - Excel crashed immediately
(I aborted the recovery / search for a solution attempt)
Then I re-opened the file I had been working on
opened the VBA IDE (the project is PW protected)
the very instant that I entered the PW and hit enter Excel crashed
crash was same both times...
Safe Mode:
Crash still happens in safe mode - steps to reproduce:
Run: Excel /safe
Open VBA IDE
r-click add userform
crashes immediately
Creation of the EXCEL.box file
Based on visually observing the folder which had the Excel.box file I did some tests to try and see when it was created. Basically it seems to appear when one of the following happens:
- the UserForm tools box is closed
- the IDE is closed (after showing the userform)
I've also now tried to modify the userform toolbox by removing everything from it. Excel is still crashing after every restart of the application (which is odd as I was not able to crash it like that earlier).
Office Repair - not tested (yet)
Reluctant to try Office Repair as based on the following quote from here (scroll down: pg 1 reply 8 by Steve IT) I'm not expecting it to work :-/ (but will try if no other suggestions surface).
Thanks for the continued suggestions, however I have tried a repair and also removed Visual Studio 2013 and Office altogether (just in case VS was interfering) and reinstalled both, but it still throws the errors reported previously.
Other user profiles
Created a brand new user called 'test'. Test has the exact same problem.
This problem eventually resolved itself, not sure why. I continued to use Excel normally and it continued to crash so I would delete the offending .box file and start over...
As of Nov 2017 Excel no longer crashes with respect to this issue; my best guess is there was an automatic update that resolved the issue.
Looks like this issue still occurs and it is not just limited to Excel but also Powerpoint.
The fix as mentioned above works where you move / delete any files in the below folder location resolves the issue.
C:\Users\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms
It is highly likely that this error is caused by bad code in a macro or an Add-In that uses forms. The problem is replicating this can be difficult so you have to debug this in some way when it does crash out.
POWERPNT.box
EXCEL.box
are some of the files that get generated, where Excel or Powerpoint crash on the splash screen.
Try adding the command
ThisWorkbook.VBProject.VBComponents("UserForm").Activate
just before your
"UserForm".Show line.
I've started using Crystal Reports recently. Have been able to create a report and mostly done with it. But suddenly I started to lose any change made inside a textbox object. I edit a textbox, save the report and close it. And then I reopen it to see that the change hasn't remained. I restart the Visual Studio and even the machine but nothing helps. I use VS 2012. Has anyone experienced anything like this?
In the report preview see if the checkbox "Save data in the report" is checked. If so, try unckecking this checkbox. It is causing me some trouble to save the report crashing Visual Studio interface.
In fact I found the reason for the problem. This happens when I try to save the changes while the focus is on the edited object, in this case textbox. But if I click somewhere else (in order to lose focus on the edited textbox) before saving, then the problem gets solved. Happy to have found it.
Welcome to the club :)
Crystal Reports can behave very strangely in some cases. For instance, some times when i edit a report file in Windows XP, it crashes the interface and corrupts the file when i save it. The same problem doesn't appear in Windows 7. However other strange things happen in Windows 7 also.
I would recommend you to
Always apply the latest Service Pack available for the Crystal Reports Engine.
Always check if the asterisk sign disappears from the opened report file when you save it (some times it doesn't when you hit save and it does when you hit save all and vice versa).
Always backup your report files once in a while because to recover a corrupted file is a very hard task.
You can try the following to find out what causes the problem
Create a new blank Windows Forms project, add the same report file there and check if it behaves the same.
Create a new blank report file and check if a change in a field behaves the same way after saving it.
Try it on another OS.
Go to Database | Verify Database and make sure the database is up to date.
Also Go to Database | Show SQL Query and reset the query. Now enter in the Selection Formula again and save.
Updating the SQL will replace the Selection Formula.
Good luck,