Why is Excel / Word 2013 starting invisible? - excel

Our Company recently upgraded to Office 2013 since we want to use SharePoint 2013.
We had several issues with the new Office Version but Microsoft has already solved some of them.
Anyways, one thing sitll grinds my gears:
Excel or Word sometimes starts invisible. It is visible in the Taskbar but the window doesnt pop up. I can click on the Icon in the taskbar but it doesn't change anything. The only way i figured out to show the window, is to use [Windows] + [Arrow Keys].
I can't tell the constellation why this is happening but most of the time it is if there isn't already another instance of the program running.
I don't have Office 2013 at home to reconstruct this but I have seen this on different Computers at our Office.
Now does anybody know about this issue?
What can I do about it?
Is it known to Microsoft?
Any help is appreciated.

I don't think that it's invisible, it's just starting off screen somewhere. Perhaps on a second monitor that is no longer there (or moved virtually to the other side). The [Windows] + [Arrows Keys] just moves the window onscreen where you can see it.
Alternatively, you could hover the mouse over the icon on the task bar, right click on the preview window and then select Move (if Move is grayed out, select restore and repeat). Then, hit any [Arrow Key] (this will attach your mouse to the window caption bar) then move your mouse (without clicking anything) until the window shows up on screen.
By doing this you can figure out what side of the screen the application is opening up (not that knowing helps much). Excel should just show up where ever you had it last, but it will not remember it's location if you snap it to the sides or top of the screen (which is what you were doing); It will only remember the Normal View size and position of the window.

My workaround for this bug is to click the Taskbar icon for the new (invisible) window while it's active, which minimizes the window, then click it again to restore it. Then it becomes visible.

I have the same issue, and it's definitely an invisible window, not off-screen (see workaround below).
It only happens in specific circumstances: when opening a second word doc from a sharepoint/office 365 location, the second doc gets a taskbar icon, but no visible content, so the first doc is still visible (but the second doc is invisibly in front of it).
The workaround is to click the minimise button on the first doc. Nothing will appear to happen because it's the invisible second doc window that receives the click event. Then select the icon on the task bar to make it reappear, properly visible.

Related

Excel scrollbar doesn't allow screen to update until you "drop" the scrollbar

This is hopefully pretty straight forward, but after an hour of searching online, I couldn't find anyone else complaining about this issue. Perhaps I just haven't found the right wording to describe it.
My company recently switched to Excel 2016, and I HATE the way the scrollbars work. If you drag the scrollbar with the mouse, your current view freezes in place until you 'drop' the scrollbar. Then the screen suddenly jumps to this part of the spreadsheet. It used to actively display the spreadsheet as you dragged the scrollbar around, so you could see everything as you moved around.
I constantly work with enormous spreadsheets where I need to find specific sections quickly, and now that the scrollbar has become useless, it takes me much longer to navigate.
I understand you can use the arrow keys, or different shortcuts to jump through a spreadsheet, but I found the scrollbar very useful when moving through very large files. I can't be the only person who wants this functionality turned back on, but I can't find any information on it, or any settings I can switch.
This fix works for me. In Win 10 open Control Panel. Navigate to: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Ease of Access Centre\Make the computer easier to see. Near the bottom in the section "Make things on the screen easier to see" is a tick-box: "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)". This was ticked for me by default so I unticked it and clicked the Apply button after which the scroll bar in Excel started to work as it does in Win 7, i.e. the cells in the background move as you drag the scrollbar left/right and up/down. Perfect.

How do I reset my Visual Basic Editor Layout?

Something has gone terribly wrong with my VBE layout. I originally closed my Project explorer and was trying to figure out how to restore it when I made some changes under the window tab of the ribbon.
I've restored the Project explorer but I can't for the life of me reset my code window to display only the current module I'm working on. The resulting layout is hideous, truly atrocious, and difficult to work with.
disgusting VBE display
I've already tried resetting my registry key for VBA as recommended here to no avail. I believe I clicked on either Cascade or Tile Vertically to make the code block appear this way.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You've never hit 'Restore Down' before on the Windows controls? Click it again (it will now be called Maximise) to put things right.
Click the square box of any of the windows in the upper right corner for it to fill the window, and then you can navigate using the project folder structure to the left, or the Window menu at top. Windows can be dragged and "docked" at different positions. For step by step instructions on how to dock windows in the VBE, including video see this site, for example
Try setting the code windows in your layout to how you like them. Then add a module to your project, then exit Access. It seems to save the layout at that point.
You can then delete the empty module.

Android studio documentation popup

Is there a way when documentation popup on AS to not hide immediately after it is showed by moving mouse on some class. What I mean. I move mouse cursor above Activity class and documentation is popup is showed, but when I try to move mouse above this popup (because I have to scroll it) it disappears. I can hold ctrl and then is will not hide, but if I press on it while holdint ctrl down it will disappear (so I should move cursor above it, release ctrl and after that to start scrolling). So is there an option to change this behaviour to be like in eclipse - documentation pop up is showed and if you move mouse above it you can scroll, otherwise it is closed.
There are a lot of bugs surrounding this UI element. I'm currently having the opposite problem where it won't go away unless I manually close it. I suspect in your case, a timeout is triggering too early, or some other event is erroneously hiding the window.
This workaround may be helpful. You can explicitly pop the documentation window from the View > Tool Windows > Documentation menu option. This will cause the tool window tab to appear on the right gutter by default. Right-clicking on the Documentation tab will pop up a menu that will allow you to pin the window, or dock it permanently in the UI by disabling "Floating Mode" and optionally moving it to the other side or the bottom.

How to restore VBA Editor to its initial settings?

How to restore the VBA Editor to its intial settings ? I have some troubles with macro and projects explorer windows settings, after some bad manipulations.
The only way I know how to accomplish this is to edit the registry.
Close All Office programs
Open a command prompt and type regedit
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\VBA\6.0\Common
Right click on Common and Export to save the *.reg file somewhere safe. This is your back up. Double clicking this file will restore your current settings.
Right click on Common and Delete it. Doing this will remove all of
its subkeys that hold your personal settings.
The "Common" key will be recreated the next time you close the VBA Editor along with any changes to the settings you may make.
I have the same issue, it's simple:
TOOLS
OPTIONS
DOCKING
Then select Object Browser, Project Explorer and that's all.
I had the same problem and realised that if I double click the blue heading of a minimal floating menu, such as the Project-VBAProject menu, it would resize and fit in with the other menus that are expanded. With a bit of moving around and double clicking the headers of the menus that I had selected from the VIEW option, I could get the screen back to the way it originally looked at the default setting of the VBA editor.
Phil
Solution Using a Mac and Excel 2016.
I found that I could drag the, e.g., project explorer (pe) window toward the edge of the vb window and the outline of the pe window moves and adjusts once you get close enough to the edge. This also works with the other windows as you bring them into view.
My default view is project explorer upper left, properties lower left. To return these to be in that order, drag the one to that location (which will fill that whole area) then drag the other one right on top of that one. That stacks them in the same column and then you can adjust their size within those locations.
I had this same issue and fought with it for literally 2 days. Finally figured it out!!!
xD First close the Project Explorer and the Properties windows using the X at the top right. Then go to Options under the Docking tab. Uncheck all boxes. Close the options window and if desired check to see that everything is undocked. Now go back to Options>Docking and check all the boxes you had checked (default is all but object browser). Your windows should have returned to default.
This may not solve the OPs original question of "default" for all, but in my case and possibly others I was looking to re-dock the "Project Explorer" and have modules pop up next to it like default. I'm not sure about other settings, but this is how I restored the above behavior.
In the project explorer right click and select "Dockable". Then insert a module and maximize it. This should restore what I consider default behavior.
Actually, it is very easy. You just have to go to View Tab then Click on the Project Explorer & Properties Window. It worked for me because I lost these two and now I got it by doing this. I hope so you will get the same result as well. View the image for more clarity.
Simple steps. Works for Mac , maybe windows too
Close all the tabs in the VBE
View --> Code . This will occupy entire space
After that ,view --> project explorer. this will pop up a tab, drag that tab to the top left corner. It auto fills into a small column which you can drag according to your preference .
Now select view --> properties window and drag the tab to bottom left.
Additional step ( if you use locals window )
Select locals window from view and drag it to the bottom.
Right click any of the window you want to move and click "Dockable". This should allow you to move all the windows as you want and place them as you wish.
I had all menus and windows missing, like no "File", no "Edit", no "View", etc.
Here's what I did:
Closed Excel
Opened the Registry Editor
Navigated to HKEY_CURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\VBA
Right clicked on VBA and renamed to VBA_old
Closed the Registry Editor
Opened Excel
Opened Visual Basic
…and voila, VBA was back to normal!
After that, I:
Reopened the Registry Editor and saw that VBA had been recreated
Deleted VBA_old
I'm not aware of a 'reset' command but the starting point would be to go to the View menu and start by setting the Code, Project Explorer and Properties windows and then the Toolbars>Standard (toolbar) perhaps?

Keep taskbar icon, replace MFC dialog

I have a MFC dialog based application. User can change the language of the dialog, and I made this by closing existing dialog, and opening another with changed language. The problem is that the effect in the taskbar is that one icon is removed, and another identical is created in its place. If my application's icon is not the last icon in the task bar it will be perceived as it was moved to the end of taskbar icon set.
I want to retain icon's position in the taskbar, and rather to prevent icon flicker at all from happening. How do I do that?
The application must support OS'es from Windows XP to Windows 7.
EDIT: alternative question for which I would accept an answer is how to create an invisible window that is nevertheless shown in the taskbar, and how to forward relevant window messages from that window to my main window?
Make the dialog a child of another outer parent window. The parent can be a dialog or any other kind of window; all it will be providing is the title bar. If the user tries to resize it it will have to forward resizing commands to the dialog, but otherwise you shouldn't need to do much in the parent window.
Why not replace the dialog with a CFormView instead? That way there's a frame window that wraps around the dialog (which is embedded in a form view) and it's the frame window that owns the taskbar icon.
Create an SDI application that displays a CFormView. Display the dialog in the default language (or whatever langauge the user previously chose) on initialization. When the user chooses the 'change language' option, simply change the form view that's being displayed with a new one.
Bonus feature: with this design, the framework will take care of things like language-specific accelerators and menus for you with no effort on your part.
For more on how to do this, check out http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/doc_view/viewmanagement/article.php/c3341/Multiple-Views-Using-SDI.htm

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