Maybe you have an addin that changes something.

Chip Pearson has some notes on how to diagnose startup errors at:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

Essentially, you move all of the stuff out of XLStart and you turn off all the
addins under Toools|addins.

Then you start adding things back one at a time and testing each time to see if
the problem is fixed. When you add something back that causes the problem to
come back, you'll have to decide what to do with that addin.



Brian wrote:

I moved book.xlt and personal.xls on to another drive, but it made no
difference.

To my knowledge, there's nothing at all in book.xlt. It's supposed to be
just a blank sheet.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
If you move personal.xls and book.xlt out of your xlstart folder, do you
get the
same prompt?

If no, put one of them back and restart excel.

If that works, put the other back and test it out.

===
Do you have any worksheet functions in book.xlt? (Like =now() or
=today()?)

Brian wrote:

No, it's XL97 and I've never upgraded.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Have you upgraded to a new version of excel?

If you have, try opening book.xlt and saving it. Then test it out.

Brian wrote:

Hmmm. I don't know quite what I did, but the recalculation now comes
up
Automatic each time. However, that happened before I tried anything
with
personal.xls.

I tried renaming personal.xls, and it had the effect that when XL
opened
there was no blank sheet.

It still prompts me to save the changes to Book1 if I want, even if
I
haven't done anything since opening XL.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
The workbook template in XLStart should be named book.xlt (not
book1.xlt).

When you recreate this template workbook, make sure you save it
with
calculation
set to automatic.

Do you have a personal.xls workbook in your XLStart folder? If
yes,
open
that
and save it (again with calculation set to automatic).

Excel uses the first workbook it opens in that session to
determine
how
the
calculation mode should be set for that session.

That might be enough to clear up that #1 problem, too.

Brian wrote:

I have used XL97 on Windows 2000 for a long time. Just lately,
XL
has
changed its behaviour, and I can't work out why. There are 2
problems,
but
they didn't start at the same time.

1. If I open XL and then immediately close it again, without
doing
anything,
it asks me do I want to save the changes to Book1? What changes
to
Book1?

2. Whenever I start XL, re-calculation is set to manual. This is
true
even
if I finish the previous session by re-setting the previous
spreadsheet
to
automatic re-calculation and saving it.

I tried saving different versions of Book1.xlt and in the end I
deleted
Book*.xl?. It made no difference.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson