Here's the link David forgot to include:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/902062

Excel 2003 SP3 fixes the problem, but if you have Excel 2003 SP2 and don't
want the SP3 update, then there is a hotfix you can request, about two links
beyond the KB article above.

I've had this issue, and fixed it by moving the New Workbook task pane to
the left of the Excel window, then whenever that part of the document is
grayed out, I view then hide the taskpane. When I get the hotfix, perhaps I
won't need to do this.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______



"dbKemp" wrote in message
...
On Dec 5, 8:48 am, dbKemp wrote:
I have a workbook with a lot of vba code. Occasionally I see a
phantom task pane on the left side of the worksheet after running some
of the code. (phantom task pane = grayed out area the same size as
the 'Help' task pane that can be eliminated by opening up any normal
task pane and then closing the task pane) I found some posts from
2005 covering the same problem, but no real solutions (there was a
suggestion to add two lines to end of vba code:
Application.CommandBars("Task Pane").Visible = True and
then
Application.CommandBars("Task Pane").Visible = False. )
It works, but like I said earlier, there is a lot of code in this
workbook.

I did find that I could eliminate the problem if I removed a line of
code:
Application.ScreenUpdating=False
This of course makes the screen go crazy while the code is running.

Any suggestions? I'm running Windows XP and Excel 2003 SP3

I continued to search and found a fix from Microsoft. See Knowledge
Base article 902062 titled: Part of a worksheet is missing when you
run a VBA macro that uses the ScreenUpdating property to unhide a
worksheet after you close the Document Recovery task pane in Excel 2003