Office menu items and icons do not function properly in ELN11

Problem:

Office menu items and icons do not function properly in ELN11. Some menu items are missing or inoperative. The applications work OK outside of the ELN.

Solution:

It turns out that each of the MS Office applications maintain a consistency file. Problem is that updates, removals, installs, or whatever has the potential to harm or corrupt these files. As everyone knows and hates, when you remove an application it never cleans everything out, so is the same with these files.

Under normal situations you might never know about the problem. But when calling one of these applications via ActiveX, one of the corruptions manifests itself in causing the menus not to work correctly.

First make sure you are not working in any office application or ELN.

For EXCEL:

* Search for excel11.xlb -- in Dow this is in folder C:\Documents and Settings\"user id"\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel

* Rename excel11.xlb to excel11_old.xlb

* Then open a new spreadsheet, go to start-programs-MS Excel. Once open, close the file (save is not necessary).

* When you go back and view excel11.xlb, you will find a new file and in most cases a much smaller file - size may not equal corruption.

* Next go to ELN and check that the menus are working.

For WORD:

* Search for normal.dot -- by default, this is in folder C:\Documents and Settings\"user id"\\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

* Rename Normal.dot to normal_old.dot

* Then open a new word document, go to start-programs-MS word. Once open, close the file (save is not necessary)

* When you go back and view normal.dot, you will find a new file and in some cases a much smaller file - size may not equal corruption.

* Next go to ELN and check that the menus are working.

For POWERPOINT:

* Search for ppt11.pcb -- in Dow this is in folder C:\Documents and Settings\"user id"\\Application Data\Microsoft\PowerPoint

* Rename ppt11.pcb to ppt11_old.pcb

* Then open a new PowerPoint document, go to start-programs-MS PowerPoint. Once open, close the file (save is not necessary)

* When you go back and view ppt11.pcb, you will find a new file and in most cases a much smaller file - size may not equal corruption.

* Next go to ELN and check that the menus are working.