[ms office - 2003] Bizarre Office 2003 issue! Please help!

[cheredenine]

Right, hold on to your hats, this is a strange one...

 

I have a user on who's computer Excel and Word are playing up. Excel will, when started, attempt to load whatever is in their H:/ drive (their home directory and where My Documents is redirected too). Nothing I've done can fix this behaviour! Starting Excel with the /safe or /automation switches gets round it, but I've tried detect & repair, uninstalling, reinstalling, registry edits, clearing out the user's profile, etc.

 

All the help on line suggests a small number of possibilities;

testing add-ins and Com add-ins (no use, no add-ins active),

clearing XLSTART folders (nothing in them anyway),

altering the 'At startup, open all files in' setting in Tools, Options (nothing set in there either)

altering the default file location (only work properly once, but just displayed the same issue with a different set of files)

 

Now i notice the same thing is happening with Word, too... Anyone got any bright ideas?

[Michael]

Do you mean when loading up Excel, it will try to load every Excel spreadsheet located in H:\ ? Is that correct?

[cheredenine]

Oh, no, not just spreadsheets - everything! The drive in question is, for reasons known only to the owner, full of shortcuts to other files - some internet pages, some documents, nothing that looks unusual. There are some sub-folders to, but Excel seems to leave those alone.

[SYNACK]

As a temporary investigative move you could set a value in the "open all files in" box to a folder with nothing in it and see what it does. If it stops it then setting it back to nothing afterwards may make it stick.

[Michael]

Never seen this behaviour before. I would recommend you allocate the user a new profile.

[flashsnaps]

Is it on any computer they login to? Or just the one? If any - new profile may be in order.

[MK-2]

only happens with their profile, or with yours too? if its just theirs then maybe just new account/profile creating for them?

[cheredenine]

Haven't had chance to shuffle the user on to another PC - she is an assistant head, so isn't in one place long... I suspect it is profile related as I can log on to the offending PC and use Excel without too much trouble...

[flashsnaps]

Profile problem, rename the old one - and it should create a new one next time he/she logs on. Copy the favorites, desktop etc across.

[cheredenine]

Time to resurrect this little gem. I took the advice offered and decided to have a fiddle with the profile. This didn't work, so I've since recreated the user account and reinstalled windows on the offending PC. Still get the issue; the only common element is the user's home directory. As soon as this is connected and available everything goes to pot, but i can't see anything suspicious in there.

 

The problem manifests itself thus. Word or Excel, when started from the program menu, will attempt to open everything in the H: drive (home directory), whether its the appropriate file format or not. I haven't quite tested it as far as i'd like as the user needs access, still - i can't tell if its reacting funny to any H: drive setting (ie blank, newly connected folders), or just the existing one. I have the feeling it'll work fine until you connect to that existing folder and then it'll mess up whatever you do until the profile is recreated. Once it does manifest itself (i've tested this bit with an empty folder for the H: drive) and you start Word, killing the Word process obviously gets rid of Word, but some shortcuts have somehow been created in the H: drive folder - i seem to remember auto-correct lists and drive shortcuts created.

 

Any ideas? Its getting annoying now - i've enough to do without bizarre random occurances!

[Polski]

You have not said HOW you start the program?

 

Desktop short-cut? Start menu?

 

Have you tried running Excel from it's executable in "Explorer"?

[Jon]

I have had this...

 

It is a permissions thing on the default profile. can't remember what files exactly.

 

A way i found that cured it was to logon to offending machine with local administrator rights. Open and close all offfice apps, the next time an ordinary user logs on the problem for me had gone.

[cheredenine]

You have not said HOW you start the program?

 

Desktop short-cut? Start menu?

 

Have you tried running Excel from it's executable in "Explorer"?

 

Well... I did mention it was from the programs menu, but to be absolutely clear, I was using the shortcuts from Start->All Programs->MS Office. This was on Office as was originally installed, after being reinstalled on the offending PC, and after the whole PC had Windows reinstalled...

[cheredenine]

I have had this...

 

It is a permissions thing on the default profile. can't remember what files exactly.

 

A way i found that cured it was to logon to offending machine with local administrator rights. Open and close all offfice apps, the next time an ordinary user logs on the problem for me had gone.

 

Gave this a try, just to see - don't think it could be related to default profile in this case as just done a clean install of windows, though. Tried launching from the actuall exe file, too, but no different.

[m2d2]

Run gpresult and see what policies apply to that user. Go through each one and see any start any scripts or make registry edits based on that user. Have you scanned the drive for viruses?

[cheredenine]

Run gpresult and see what policies apply to that user. Go through each one and see any start any scripts or make registry edits based on that user. Have you scanned the drive for viruses?

 

Nothing suspicious that I can see in group policy for that user/computer - a couple of scripts copy shortcuts to the desktop, but thats it. Already done one virus check on the relevant folders on the server; the PC had a fresh install yesterday...

[JJonas]

We had the same thing happening to our users try this.

 

Make the user an administrator and log them on - i bet the problem has gone away.

 

I also bet it wont happen on a FAT32 machine this is an NTFS permissions problem.

 

If I recall correctly on the local pc you need to give DOMAIN USERS full permissions to c:\windows\application data and c:\windows\temp

[cheredenine]

We had the same thing happening to our users try this.

 

Make the user an administrator and log them on - i bet the problem has gone away.

 

I also bet it wont happen on a FAT32 machine this is an NTFS permissions problem.

 

If I recall correctly on the local pc you need to give DOMAIN USERS full permissions to c:\windows\application data and c:\windows\temp

 

We have a winner! This user, when made an admin, didn't have the problem, as you said.. With the permissions set on the local machine as you suggested and admin status removed, the problem is still gone. Thanks for your help!

 

How odd, though - i can't see how this works, both as a problem and as a solution. The machine in question has been reinstalled, and both the user account and the profile have been recreated; no common element left. More to the point, my laptop is on NTFS, has Office 2003 installed, doesn't have the domain user permissions set and works fine. Odd...

[JJonas]

More to the point, my laptop is on NTFS, has Office 2003 installed, doesn't have the domain user permissions set and works fine. Odd...

 

is your account in the administrators group on the server?

 

it is a bizarre problem probably just a local Norfolk oddity

[cheredenine]

is your account in the administrators group on the server?

 

it is a bizarre problem probably just a local Norfolk oddity

 

My account is, of course... Would explain why the other classroom PCs don't exhibit the problem, too - they all appear to be Fat32 rather than NTFS, thanks to ICT Solutions...

[Michael]

Glad you sorted the problem. Question I have to ask though, is why are you using FAT32 on your machines?

[cheredenine]

Glad you sorted the problem. Question I have to ask though, is why are you using FAT32 on your machines?

 

Aha... Not my choice. I've recently joined the school and have inherited a network previously supported by ICT Solutions, Norfolk CC's IT support arm. They have particular... ways... of doing things. The reason I was given was that some school, somewhere in Norfolk, had had trouble between a peice of educational software and NTFS, so the standard practice now is to use FAT32. Of course this means no file and folder level permissions on local machines, so Winsuite (another great legacy) has to be set to hide all files on the C drive..

[Michael]

had had trouble between a peice of educational software and NTFS

 

It must of been pretty old software! I'm not familiar with Winsuite, but I haven't heard great things about it. NTFS is easily more robust than FAT32, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you that

[Jon]

We have a winner! This user, when made an admin, didn't have the problem, as you said.. With the permissions set on the local machine as you suggested and admin status removed, the problem is still gone. Thanks for your help!

 

..

 

Like I said...

 

If you had of logged on with Local admin rights opened and closed all office apps this would have solved your problem.

[cheredenine]

Like I said...

 

If you had of logged on with Local admin rights opened and closed all office apps this would have solved your problem.

 

I did login with local admin rights, as my user account is a domain admin account; and i certainly opened and closed the applications. This didn't stop the issue returning for the user affected, though, It was only changing the permissions on the folders that solved it, i'm afraid.