Mysterious Text Boxes Appear in .xls format

**carlas** · 07-14-2010, 07:01 PM

I have created a wookbook with about 10 spreadsheets in Excel 2007. I saved it as a 1997-2003 format (.xls) file.

I have had a NUMBER of complaints from my customers who have Excel 2003. When they open the file a number of text boxes randomly appear on each worksheet. They can delete them. I have searched my file and no text boxes are being used.

I tried resaving the original file again and each time the boxes show up in a different place.

Has anyone had this problem? Is there a solution?

Thank you,
Carla

**Marcol** · 07-14-2010, 07:44 PM

Hi carlas,

Welcome to the forum.

I think what you are describing are system alerts, not textboxes.
To avoid them you are better to work in the style of the earliest version of Excel that you expect to encounter later.

When you save a workbook as 97- 2003 format from 2007 a dialogue box appears telling you where to expect compatability problems, if any are flagged as major, you should address these issues.

I am seldom on the recieving end of files that have not been "Fixed", other than ones that contain VBa issues, but I suspect this is why your clients are getting warnings (Textboxes?).

Perhaps someone else will explain it better to you. In the meantime I hope this might be of some help to you.

**carlas** · 07-15-2010, 02:06 PM

I don't know about warnings. All of the "boxes" are empty and my users can delete them. They also do not show up in the same place for every user.

I will go in and see about the compatibility errors. I don't get a message when I save.

There are no compatibility errors noted when I check. I also created the file in the Compatibility mode.

Any suggestions?