Vent on, engage spleen...

Is there anyone on the planet that can provide a cogent explanation of just
what provokes Excel to die with a cheery and modestly colorful dialog
informing you that "Microsoft Excel has encountered a problem and needs to
close. We are sorry for the inconvenience". Further asking you if you want
to attempt to recover your work, a process that to date has proved totally
worthless, and exhorting you to send the gory details to Microsoft, not so
they can actually fix your problem, but to make their product more saleable
in the future. What a set of cojones.

At any rate, we've been laboring on this project for far too long as it is
and now, as it crosses the threshold of completion, this particular
situation pops up far to often to be able to offer the project as a
competent package. We have gone through the entire litany of cleaning code,
reinstalling Excel, getting the latest of updates from the Great White
Fathers is Redmond, etc, ad nauseum. All to absolutely no avail.

Merely entering a normal vanilla value in a normal vanilla cell causes the
thing to fold like a busted flush. That's in one .xls file. In another
seemingly identical file, one can enter things without let or problem. Even
better; the actual VBA code, all of it, resides in a third .xls file and is
in use by all of the other .xls file, them that works and them that doesn't.
We'd be hard pressed to believe that it's the code. One should not be able
to program the untimely and unanticipated death of whatever environment is
supporting your efforts.

Obviously the first .xls file is damaged in some way but just how did this
happen? This is Microsoft dying, not anything we wrote [which functions
flawlessly when the Microsoft code deigns to function]. Moreover it's not
just this file, this happens all the time, every few minutes or so,
willy-nilly with no rhyme or reason on many distinct .xls files, each
ostensibly identical except for data values.

At this juncture we would, philosophically anyway, like nothing better than
to fall back and re-implement the project using an actual language instead
of using a half-assed application whose reach enormously exceeds its grasp.
But that is not to be. We're pretty much stuck with this thing. We can live
with the glacial speeds at which it moves, the incredibly clumsy syntax, the
utter lack of elegance and horsepower, but we really do need the thing to
actually function all the time, every time.

So here's someone's big chance to show that Excel isn't the pale anemic and
functionally worthless piece of **** that it gives every appearance of being
right now. We would like nothing better than to be able to salvage the
endless hours we've invested into this thing. If someone, anyone, provides
that aforementioned cogent explanation, we here at the home will take
appropriate measures to insure that sainthood will be bestowed upon them.

Disengage spleen, vent off....

--
Terry

"I said I never had much use for one,
I never said I didn't know how to use one."
M. Quigley