Can not exit from Excel

**jimhabegger** · 03-07-2011, 08:58 PM

OS: Vista Home
Excel version: Microsoft Office 2000

If I try to exit from Excel using the red X button, or File, Exit, or Alt-F4, or the taskbar, nothing happens. If I try to close the workbook window using its X button, or create a new workbook, I get this message:

Microsoft Excel for Windows has stopped working
A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.

This just started happening yesterday, March 7. The only installations I know of that happened yesterday were a Java update and a Flash Player update.

The problem happens when I launch Excel from the start menu or application icon, and when I launch it by double-clicking on a workbook icon, with one exception. I have one workbook that I downloaded from the Internet some months ago. When I launch Excel by double-clicking on that workbook, I can exit normally. I've used that workbook many times since I downloaded it, and I've used Excel often since then, without ever having this problem until yesterday.

**shg** · 03-07-2011, 09:15 PM

Try Detect & Repair, and, failing that, reinstall Excel.

**jimhabegger** · 03-07-2011, 09:36 PM

Thank you, shg. I tried both of those already. Actually, I uninstalled the whole Office 2000 suite, because the individual applications are not listed separately in the Windows program list. Next I'll try using the add/remove menu on the installation disk to remove Excel and then add it back. If that doesn't work, I'll try uninstalling Office again, then deleting all the Office application folders I can find, then reinstalling.

Update: I uninstalled the whole Office 2000 suite, deleted all the Microsoft Office folders in the Program Files folder and in all user application data folders, ran ccleaner, restarted the computer, and re-installed Office 2000, and I still have the problem. Apart from double-clicking on the workbook I downloaded from the Internet, no matter how I launch Excel, nothing happens if I try to exit using any menu or button, and it crashes if I try to close the workbook with its X button.

I found a way to work around the problem: I modified the workbook that I downloaded from the Internet, to make a default template which I saved in the XLStart folder. Now when I launch Excel from the Start menu, I can exit from it normally. I still can't exit if I launch it by double-clicking on any workbook other than the one I downloaded.

**jimhabegger** · 03-08-2011, 07:10 PM

The problem is resolved. A day or two before it started, I had changed the language for non-Unicode programs. Yesterday, I changed it back to English, to resolve another problem I was having. Then I went back to investigating my problem with Excel, and it was gone! I changed the non-Unicode language again, and the problem came back. I changed it back to English, and the problem was gone again.

**shg** · 03-08-2011, 07:34 PM

Glad you got it sorted, and thanks for posting back with the resolution, but how changing the code page hosed Excel is a puzzlement to me.

**jimhabegger** · 03-08-2011, 09:15 PM

My Excel is the Office 2000 version. Maybe it uses the old code page system somewhere in the worksheets, and gets confused with a different code page. The problem happened when I launched it by double-clicking workbooks it had created, but not when I double-clicked a workbook downloaded from the Internet. The one from the Internet might be from a more recent version of Excel, not affected by the code page change.

I'm planning to use AppLocale now for the program that needs a different locale, so I can keep the system-wide non-Unicode language set to English.