Thanks Dave. I think that was the answer I was fishing for because I did
change the path in the registry years ago when I had this problem, but I
couldn't figure out where to do with Windows 2000. I am not in a position to
try your suggestion today, but I plan to. Thanks again.

-Beverly

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

ps. The 11.0 in
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General
refers to excel 2003.



Dave Peterson wrote:

I _think_ I've seen a registry tweak (or a link to an MSKB that shows the
registry tweak) that allows you to point to a network drive for the XLStart
folder.

I don't connect to a network drive so that I could test, but I could change a
registry setting to point to a different folder.

If you feel comfortible about editting the registry (and will make a backup
before you change anything!), you might want to experiment with this key:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General
A string value name of:
Xlstart
with the value data of:
D:\yourpath\to\xlstart

If you screw up, you could change the value data back to:
XLSTART

Be careful when your screwing around in the registry. Make notes of existing
values and make a back up before you do anything!

BevFromIndy wrote:

Dave, you are obviously quite knowledgeable on these things, but I must have
not stated my problem clearly. I am working from a personal computer at home
and from time to time, we sychronize our PC with our laptop. We want to be
able to update the macros with our automatic sychronizing program which
copies files from the D drive of one computer to the D drive of the other
including our Excel macros which are extensive. We would like to save all
changes and additional macros to a personal.xls file on the D:\XLStart\ drive
for this reason. But Excel only wants to update the personal.xls file on the
C: drive.

Basic question:
Can I redefine where Excel loads the personal.xls file from? (In the same
way you can define where Word looks for the Normal.dot file.) We are using
Excel 2000.

Thanks for all your help.

-Beverly

--Beverly

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

First, I wouldn't share a workbook named personal.xls. Since excel can only
have one file open with that name, the user would have to make a decision to
either use his/her personal.xls or your version of personal.xls.

In fact, I would save the file as an addin (*.xla). And then store that addin
in a network share. I'd also use the UNC path (\\servername\path\BevsUtils.xla)
instead of using a mapped drive.

But since macros in an addin aren't visible via tools|macro|macros..., you'd
have to give the user some way of accessing those subroutines.

For additions to the worksheet menu bar, I really like the way John Walkenbach
does it in his menumaker workbook:
http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/tip53.htm

Here's how I do it when I want a toolbar:
http://www.contextures.com/xlToolbar02.html
(from Debra Dalgleish's site)

========
An alternative if you want to keep the file a normal workbook. Put that *.xls
file on the network drive.

But then put a shortcut to that file in XLStart.

BevFromIndy wrote:

Is there anyway--via the registry or Excel options or any other way -- to
have Excel point to a different directory to open the personal.xls file
besides the existing default directory on the C: drive under XLSTART. We
have tried a SAVE AS of the personal.xls file to our own XLSTART directory on
a different drive. We want this partly because we often transfer files and
programs to other computers.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Beverly

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson