Scares me too because there's nothing I can put my finger on that
precipitated this event. I've been using this same file for years. No error
messages ever came up, no strange windows coming up asking me to do
something foreign with this file. Statistically that means this could
happen again, but I guess I'll just have to deal with it. I can always use
`show' comments, edit them and then use `hide' comments. And the
As-***%*$holes at Microsoft don't even have a record of this kind of thing
happening on a product that's been out there for 20 years. Go figure. Guess
that falls under the category of `losing touch with reality'. I even tried
sending MS an e-mail describing the problem, only to get an error message
back saying they couldn't comment on my problem because.............get
this............"we have no record of events like this happening on your
system". Yikes!

It's things like this that drive folks (after a while) to alternatives like
Open Office (and it's free!!)...............Paul C.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
One thing that would scare me if I were you is that you could spend hours
getting things right and the next time you open the file, the same problem
rears
its ugly head.

Have you thought of any alternatives? Maybe using a cell with the comment
in it
-- or a different sheet with all the comments. Then maybe you could use
=vlookup() or =index(match()) to return just the notes that you're
interested in
(not as comments, but as values in a different cell).

Good luck with whatever approach you take, though.

Paul Calcagno wrote:

So far I've tried saving the file as an Excel 2003 (xls) file but that
still
doesn't enable the `edit comments' command. Nor does saving the file as
an
Open Office (calc) file. All that does is eliminate all the comments. I
even
ran the Diagnostics package which is supposed to do some kind of a
repair,
but nothing happened to make my comments editable.

What has worked so far is to copy sections of the spreadsheet with
comments
over a clear space, delete the original comments and then copy and paste
the
comment text from the new location back to the old places. Took be about
an
hour to do this for all the comments in the workbook. All the new
comments
re-entered are not editable with the right click, `edit comments'
approach.

Next thing is to take a gander at those macro links you
provided..............Paul C.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
If you find a solution (even rebuilding), please post back.


Paul Calcagno wrote:

Hi Dave.

I do have access to other versions of Excel. At lease I can save the
errant
doc as a Office 2003 file and see if the comments are editable. I'm
not
adverse to learning about macros so I may give your link suggestions a
look
see.

Thanks.............Paul C.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
I don't have any other guesses, but if you want to play around with
macros
(for
fun (????!!!)), here are a couple of links:

If you're new to macros:

Debra Dalgleish has some notes how to implement macros he
http://www.contextures.com/xlvba01.html

David McRitchie has an intro to macros:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

Ron de Bruin's intro to macros:
http://www.rondebruin.nl/code.htm

(General, Regular and Standard modules all describe the same thing.)

================
One more thing...

Do you have access to other versions of excel? Maybe you can save a
copy
as
*.xls and see if the older versions (or xl2010???) can open it
correctly????

Sometimes, different versions of excel are more sensitive to
different
problems.

(Yeah, It's a shot in the dark!)

Paul Calcagno wrote:

Hi Dave, thanks for your fine comments.

The macro information you provided is, unfortunately total greek to
me. I
did try the repair suggestion but that didn't work. This doesn't
bode
well
for the `repair' function.

One thing I can do is rebuild the worksheet by copying the
commented
cells
to another location, and copying and pasting the comments into
newly
generated comment boxes. Will take a while.

I can't believe that such a basic error doesn't have a documented
fix.
Seems
logical that any function that Excel can provide should have a
documented
repair action when it stops working. What the hell are these
programmers
thinking anyway.

I even tried a restore but to no avail. No surprise there since
restore
usually doesn't touch saved files.

Thanks again..............Paul C.

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
I saw your other post and didn't have any solutions.

But it sounds to me like that worksheet has gotten corrupted. If
the
comments
work in other worksheets in the same workbook or a different
workbook,
then I
don't think it's excel behaving badly.

I had a worksheet that got corrupted. It contained lots and lots
of
comments.
I was using them to store the old values when something changed.

The only solution I had was to rebuild the worksheet (not a
pretty
sight!). And
since my guess was that the great number of comments caused my
corruption,
I
decided not to use so many in the rebuilt worksheet.

It was a miserable effort to get things to work correctly.

But before you do this, you may want to see if you can remove
some
of
your
comments that are no longer necessary.