File saving issues with Win2k and Excel 97

[rjj130]

Hi there all. I'm new to this board as this is my first post.

I'm a network tech here at a company, small >100 clients, and I am dumb founded by this latest problem.

On one of our job sites (construction) we have an older Dell running Win2K along with Office 97. The client explained it to me like this.

1. He opened a file he opens every week (timesheetxxyyzz.xls) x= month y=day z=year
2. He then fills out his sheet appropriately and does File>Save As>Re-names File>Save.
3. He noticed it for the first time today that when he went back into 'My Documents' the file was not there.

I had him do Start>Search>'File Name' and it found it in 'My Documents'. (The same My Documents)

Next I had him try to re-save the file to the 'Desktop' and it worked perfectly. Dropped it into 'My Documents' and it was there.

Had him open it, 'Save As' another name and it saved fine, however again it was not in 'My Documents'

This is a very puzzling problem and was wondering if anyone else had this same experience?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The first thing that popped in my mind after reading your post is that with a multi-user OS like W2K, it's very possible that you are looking at "My Documents" of another user. Is there more than one person who uses
this particular PC or are other user accounts on this PC?

 

[rjj130]

No, it is a standalone account. Only his.

Also, with 'My Documents' we standardize them on the computers to C:\My Documents to reduce on profile load when on a networked environment here in the office. That way if someone has a huge 'My Documents' folder for some reason it's not going back and forth on the network when logging on/off.

Thanks for the quick response though.

 

[Lone Wolf]

How did you change the path to "My Docs" folder? Did you use the group editor policy management console?

I have a feelign depending on how you changed the path to it, you may have inadvertendly screwed up something in the registry. There are many subkeys in the registry that contain the standard path and if not all of them are consistent, it may account for this odd behavior.

 

[rjj130]

Right click on 'My Docs' then change the target path manually before the computer went out to the field.

The user is logging onto the machine locally. There is no connection to our network at anytime.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Right click on 'My Docs' then change the target path manually before the computer went out to the field.

OK the My Docs listed in Windows Explorer Or My Docs icon on your desktop??

You should go into the group editor policy "gpedit.mmc" (by going into Start \ Run) and change the path through that instead.

 

[rjj130]

My Docs located on the Desktop.

What's the problem with manually doing this? There is only a single user on the computer and it's not resident on the domain.

Like I said it worked perfectly fine, roughly 2 years without a hitch until now. And it's only with Excel.

 

[Lone Wolf]

My Docs located on the Desktop.

What's the problem with manually doing this? There is only a single user on the computer and it's not resident on the domain.

Like I said it worked perfectly fine, roughly 2 years without a hitch until now. And it's only with Excel.

Like i referenced in my previous posting, there are many subkeys in the registry that point to the My Document's path. Not all of them are handled in the same way. Changing the "Target path" via the icon on your desktop doesn't change it globally. i.e. as you have experienced, it doesn't work the same in Excel.

Which version of MS Office are you using out of curiosity?

Open up the registry and drill down to the following 2 keys and copy and paste the data in the right pane:

1) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache

2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DocFolderPaths

 

[renil]

hi
have u checked for any virus infections???
there is a virus reported for this,its actually a macro
check these out
http://www.viruslibrary.com/virusinfo/Macro.Excel.Disaster.htm
http://www.avast.com/eng/viruses/macro_viruses/excel_excel97/excelmacro_laroux.html

this may work or anyhow jst tell me what was the problem

regrds
renil