Frequently
Asked Questions
Working with Excel 2007
Problem: The ‘Developer’ option
is not available on the Excel 2007 Toolbar ribbon.
Resolution: Under ‘Excel options’ on the Main Menu (from
the button in the top-left hand corner), select ‘Popular’; there is a tick-box
there to allow the Developer option to be displayed.
Problem: The ‘Add-Ins’ option is
not available on the Excel 2007 Toolbar ribbon.
Resolution: open up Excel (no files open);
Open maclib.xls directly from the C:\ folder;
Open your master DUPSES file;
On the Developer tab, select ‘Macros’ – on the
dialogue box, click ‘edit’ – this should take you into the Visual Basic (VB)
Editor;
Place the cursor on a comment outside of a procedure
(e.g. by the first apostrophe) in the VB Editor window;
From the ‘run’ menu, select ‘run sub/user form’;
From the list given, select ‘fins_toolbar_name’ –
click the ‘run’ button.
‘Add-Ins’ will then appear with the DUPSES toolbar
included when you return to Excel.
Toolbar Failure
Problem: When you hit any Toolbar button, you get a
message such as "Maclib.xls could not be found", or "You cannot
open two versions of maclib.xls".
Resolution: This is a painful Excel feature. When you
copy the maclib.xls file from place to place, Excel alters the location where
the toolbar buttons look for the macro code to the new file location. If you
then delete it (or it is on A:, for instance), there is no code to find, and
you get these sorts of message.
There is a way to clear this without reinstalling -
indeed, reinstalling won't work because the toolbar location is part of your
Excel set-up, so survives through a re-install - follow these instructions:
a) open up Excel (no files open);
b) use View - Toolbars -Customize to get the necessary
box;
c) Take the slide bar to the bottom to reveal the set
of Fin-S Toolbars, BUTSES through to TOFSES;
d) Highlight (as opposed to tick-box) each toolbar in
turn, and delete it using the button;
e) When all toolbars have been cleared, close the
dialogue box, then open the C:\maclib.xls file.
Your toolbars should be restored to full working
order.
Macros Cannot Be Enabled
Problem: When you hit any Toolbar button, you get a
message such as "Maclib.xls could not be found"; when you open
“maclib.xls”, you are not prompted to enable macros.
Resolution: Under more recent versions of Windows
(particularly ME and XP), Excel comes with the capability to run macros
EXPLICITLY TURNED OFF. Fin-s needs this capability turned back on.
a) open up Excel, with no files open;
b) select “Tools”, then “Macro”, then “Security…”;
c) set the Security level to Medium;
d) open maclib.xls and you should be prompted to
enable the macros.
Compile Error when Running Macros
Problem: When you hit a toolbar button, you get thrown
into the Visual Basic Editor with a Dialogue Box saying “Compiler Error”
Resolution: Under some release of Excel, the ability
to use Dynamic Variable Allocation is delivered as DISABLED. Fin-S needs this
capability enabled. To fix it:
a) open up Excel, and open C:\maclib.xls;
b) select “Tools”, then “Macro” and “Visual Basic
Editor”
c) select “Tools”, then “Options”, then select the
“Editor” tab if it not already selected;
d) uncheck the tick-box labeled “Require Variable
Declaration”.
Movement Load Problems
Problem: When you try to load a movement, you get the
message "That Library does not appear to be open - try again"
Resolution: This is usually caused by confusion
between movements and movement libraries. A movement library is an Excel file
containing a number of movement definitions. A movement is what you would play
in a single session. Fin-S has an option cell for the movement library
name, which is usually "movmitch" or "movhowell" or
something similar, and will prompt you for the movement name, e.g. M9B3. In V5,
you can put the movement name in a separate option cell. What tends to happen
is that new users confuse the two, and put the movement name in the option cell
for the movement library name, so Fin-S tries to find an Excel file
called "M9B3", and it isn't there.
Run-Time Errors
Problem: You get a message up which says something
like "Run-Time Error 9".
Resolution: This means that something has gone wrong
with the Visual Basic code on which Fin-S is based. There are numerous
causes, but the main one seems to be where people have used Excel features such
as Copy & Paste to move data around, particularly names in a CLUBDB
database. CLUBDB uses Excel features which can be corrupted by data being
copied around in this way - a tell-tale sign is usually finding
"#REF" in some of the cells of the "MP_Sessions" or
"Percentage" sheets. If this occurs, your best bet is to send me a
copy of the files where you are encountering the problem so that I can address
it for you, unless you are very confident that you can put the corruption
right.
Can’t Find Project or Library
This is a relatively new problem. When you try and run
any toolbar button, you get the above message. This seems to be limited to
people with the latest releases of Microsoft operating system (e.g. XP) where
there are problems with the References. Although this is not a guaranteed fix,
if you get into the Visual Basic Editor (on the “Tools” menu in Excel, select
“Macro”, then “Macros”, then “Edit”), and you should be able to find the
references under the tools menu.
If you select “References”, you will see a window like
this below.
You will probably find that one of the “ticked” boxes
starts with the word “MISSING” – this means that your PC does not have that
library installed – you need to un-tick that box and find another one to tick
from within the list, e.g. you might have the “Microsoft CDO 1.21 Library” to
replace the library highlighted above – if you cannot sort this out, seek
support by mailing me.
Can’t Open Maclib because of “Security Level”
This is a problem particularly experienced by those
using Microsoft XP operating system – when you try to open Maclib.xls, usually
by hitting a toolbar button or name, you get an error message telling you that
you cannot open it because the file contains macros and the Security Level in
Excel is set to “High”.
You can get round this by opening Excel, then from the
“Tools” menu, select “Options” and then “Security”. You should find that the
Macro Security settings are set to “High” – alter this to “Medium”. This won’t
do you any harm – you will simply be prompted to enable macros each time you
open a file which has them, rather than being refused automatically. You can
set it to “Low”, which means that you won’t get prompted every time, but that
does expose you to possible security threats, so I don’t recommend it.
Last modified by Chris Stableford, March 2009