Is your personal.xls workbook hidden (it should be)
Window -- hide workbook

Had you used Excel to back up your personal.xls

Tools, options, General
is the alternate startup blank or do you have something in it
if you you do is there a personal.xls in it.
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"davegb" wrote in message oups.com...
Steve,
Thanks for your reply. I already checked for mulitple instances. There
is only one on my C drive. I have copied it to my H (network) drive to
back it up, but I didn't think XL would find it there. Is that correct?


STEVE BELL wrote:
You may have more than one Personal.xls in your system. It is possible you
have more than 1 Startup folder.

A quick way to find them is to unhide one and open File Properties to see
where it is.
Open the other and do the same.

You are allowed as many as you want - but the names must be different.

Find them and either rename one of them or get rid of it.

If you decide to get rid of it
Rename it
Compare them and consolidate all your code
Dump one of them

--
steveB

Remove "AYN" from email to respond
"davegb" wrote in message
oups.com...
I have a number of general purpose macros in my PERSONAL worksheet. But
the first time I access any of them, XL tells me that there is an
instance of PERSONAL already open (PERSONAL automatically opens when I
open XL), and it can't open another with the same name. I have to close
PERSONAL, the run the macro, which opens PERSONAL. Then I can run the
macros again. Irritating to say the least. Is there a better way?