Excel 2003 graphics are invisible after loading xla
 

I have a strange and very awkward problem with Excel 2003:

1) Start Excel 2003, but don't open any workbooks
2) Use a menu to load an xla that we have written
3) Open a workbook containing graphics - but they don't show. To make
them show you need to reset one of the lines to be visible, then all
the graphics suddenly show.

At the moment, the only work-around I can find is as follows:
1) Start Excel 2003 and open a workbook containing a graphic (anything
drawn using Excel shapes).
2) Carry on as above - but now you find that everything works fine!

Our xla definitely does NOT do anything directly to the Excel
graphics. In fact, execution very quickly drops into a DLL which
doesn't even have a referance to the Excel object library.

The problem seems to be connected with opening databases using DAO
3.6.
Our DLL opens several databases upon start-up. If I skip some of these
it works OK. If I open these but skip some of the others it works OK.
If I open all of them it fails.

The problem does not happen in Excel 2000. I haven't tested Excel
2002.

One solution I have tried (in desperation) is to open a workbook
automatically when loading the xla. The problem with this is that
Excel is no longer in its uninitialised state. This means that
calculation settings have already been fixed, rather than coming from
the first workbook that the user opens. It may also cause other
problems I don't know about.

Please help! I can't release the xla until this problem is fixed! Any
ideas are appreciated!