MAYDAY! Menus producing a "ghost" box rather than a drop down list

Folks I have a big problem - I am using MS Office 2003 Student /
Teacher edition and am desperately seeking help. My machine is a
P4/3.2 with 2gb ram and a disgusting amount of disk space running XP
Home.

What the problem is is that when I try to access ANY of the commands
on the second line (e.g. File / Edit / View / Insert / Format etc.) I
get a ghostly light gray transparent box instead of the usual drop
down list of commands.

This is whether I use the mouse or the various Alt-commands. The ONLY
keyboard shortcut command I've been able to get to work is alt-F4
which I don't think is on this second line.

I tried to get help from Microsoft but their system demanded my PID -
which naturally I have to access to Help / About etc. (Gee thanks!)

I am fairly sure that I have something garbled in my setup (Excel has
been working flawlessly on this box for more than a year until now)
since while I am the main user on the system I am not the ONLY user on
this machine and Excel works perfectly on my wife's account. This is
not much of a work-around of course since I have lots of templates I
use all the time which she does not have access to.

I've checked the XLSTART folder at C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office10\XLStart but that didn't do the trick. I vaguely recall
from my tech support days of 10 years ago that there was a default
file of settings in a file called something like book.xls or book1.xls
which plays the same role to Excel that normal.dot does to MS Word.
But I don't see such a file anywhere (a LOT of MS Word problems can be
solved simply by renaming Normal.dot and letting MS Word recreate the
file with the system defaults) so I'm stuck.

I'm also thinking this might be a simple Regedit fix which I know
enough about Regedit to manage but DON'T want to go in there without
advice from someone more knowledgeable than me. Since Excel works just
fine on her account it's got to be some garbled .ini file or something
like that - I'd be happy to copy hers over mine if some "MVP" figures
that's a good fix

Since Murphy is very much alive and well you KNOW this sort of thing
is going to happen on a Friday afternoon when you're facing a tax
deadline on Tuesday and were planning to work around the clock to get
it done right? Does it ever happen differently?

Any replies would be HUGELY HUGELY HUGELY appreciated.

If you can get in to the VBA Editor (ALT+F11), try to run Detect
And Repair via code. Go to the Insert menu, choose Module, and
paste in the following code. Press F5 to execute it.

Sub AAA()
Application.CommandBars.FindControl(ID:=3774).Execute
End Sub


--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com



"The Horny Goat" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Folks I have a big problem - I am using MS Office 2003 Student
> /
> Teacher edition and am desperately seeking help. My machine is
> a
> P4/3.2 with 2gb ram and a disgusting amount of disk space
> running XP
> Home.
>
> What the problem is is that when I try to access ANY of the
> commands
> on the second line (e.g. File / Edit / View / Insert / Format
> etc.) I
> get a ghostly light gray transparent box instead of the usual
> drop
> down list of commands.
>
> This is whether I use the mouse or the various Alt-commands.
> The ONLY
> keyboard shortcut command I've been able to get to work is
> alt-F4
> which I don't think is on this second line.
>
> I tried to get help from Microsoft but their system demanded my
> PID -
> which naturally I have to access to Help / About etc. (Gee
> thanks!)
>
> I am fairly sure that I have something garbled in my setup
> (Excel has
> been working flawlessly on this box for more than a year until
> now)
> since while I am the main user on the system I am not the ONLY
> user on
> this machine and Excel works perfectly on my wife's account.
> This is
> not much of a work-around of course since I have lots of
> templates I
> use all the time which she does not have access to.
>
> I've checked the XLSTART folder at C:\Program Files\Microsoft
> Office\Office10\XLStart but that didn't do the trick. I vaguely
> recall
> from my tech support days of 10 years ago that there was a
> default
> file of settings in a file called something like book.xls or
> book1.xls
> which plays the same role to Excel that normal.dot does to MS
> Word.
> But I don't see such a file anywhere (a LOT of MS Word problems
> can be
> solved simply by renaming Normal.dot and letting MS Word
> recreate the
> file with the system defaults) so I'm stuck.
>
> I'm also thinking this might be a simple Regedit fix which I
> know
> enough about Regedit to manage but DON'T want to go in there
> without
> advice from someone more knowledgeable than me. Since Excel
> works just
> fine on her account it's got to be some garbled .ini file or
> something
> like that - I'd be happy to copy hers over mine if some "MVP"
> figures
> that's a good fix
>
> Since Murphy is very much alive and well you KNOW this sort of
> thing
> is going to happen on a Friday afternoon when you're facing a
> tax
> deadline on Tuesday and were planning to work around the clock
> to get
> it done right? Does it ever happen differently?
>
> Any replies would be HUGELY HUGELY HUGELY appreciated.

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:00:55 -0500, "Chip Pearson" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>If you can get in to the VBA Editor (ALT+F11), try to run Detect
>And Repair via code. Go to the Insert menu, choose Module, and
>paste in the following code. Press F5 to execute it.
>
>Sub AAA()
> Application.CommandBars.FindControl(ID:=3774).Execute
>End Sub

Thanks for the tip - after writing the SOS newsgroup message I
rebooted several times as a result of getting an update on Adobe
Reader (could THAT have caused it?!?)

I did get to the VBA editor (which I have used previously to build a
function that a close equivalent to was added with the XP 2002
Financial Analysis pack so that tells you how long it has been) and
whatever happened my screwed up Excel now seems unscrewed.

I wish I knew exactly what I had just seen since I got the dubious
honor of working on our store's year ends without the benefit of the
templates I take for granted. If worst had come to worst I could have
copied the files to my laptop but given my personal monitor is a 25"
widescreen vs. a 15" laptop screen and it's a WIDE spreadsheet you can
see why that was my worst case scenario.

Many many thanks....LC