If the user is using two monitors, heres another possible cause:

Several of my workbooks would either fail to open (just an empty grey window
appeared) or would seem to vanish when I clicked €œrestore down€�.

Leaping to the conclusion that this was a corrupted workbook, I searched the
user community and found a Registry Key repair that seemed to work, but
sometimes the errant workbook would open once, then fail to open thereafter
(grey window again). This was wierd; how could fixing the registry key,
temporarily repair a couple of individual workbooks? Were they somehow badly
corrupted, needing repair?

Then I discovered several dumb, compounded errors I was making that were
really the cause of the problem: I was working with two monitors, and had
Excel's window stretched across both screens with the errant workbook
positioned in the right screen. Closing Excel, then re-launching Excel,
caused Excel to open by default full screen left monitor only, so the errant
workbook which seemed to fail to open, was actually opening, but out of view,
off-screen to the right, leaving the impression that there was something
wrong with the workbook.

Compounding my error was the fact that I sometimes inadvertently would hit
€˜restore down when I really meant to €˜minimize a workbook. When you double
click on the errant workbook to launch Excel, Excel opens by default to full
left screen only, and since I had mistakenly hit €˜restore down when I really
meant to €˜minimize the last time, I was now seeing an empty grey window in
the left monitor, and there was no minimized box in the lower left corner,
again misleading myself into thinking there must be something wrong with the
worksheet.

Hope this helps somebody...


"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Sometimes one of these works when you're having trouble with double clicking on
the file in windows explorer:

Tools|Options|General|Ignore other applications (uncheck it)

--- or ---

Close Excel and
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /unregserver
then
Windows Start Button|Run
excel /regserver

The /unregserver & /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's
factory defaults.


Michael wrote:

--

Dave Peterson