Vista - Excel Worksheet Tabs Disappeared in vista 64

The strangest thing has happened in my excel 2007, running in vista 64. As of yesterday, it no longer displays the individual tabs for worksheets in a workbook of existing files. Any new blank file it will show the standard three tabs. Its not a problem with the file which when viewed in vista 32 or xp still shows the tabs. I've searched the ms knowledgebase and the web, but this appears to be a one of a kind. The "unhide" worksheet feature is greyed out in excel.

Any ideas, suggestions would be welocme

Thanks, Mozman

Okay, let's try this:

1) Open the existing workbook.
2) Click on the Office Orb
3) Click "Excel Options"
4) Click "Advanced" in the left pane
5) In the left pane, scroll down to "Display options for this workbook"
6) Check the box that says "Show sheet tabs"

Right now, I haven't found a way to check it for everything, if it's a problem for multiple workbooks.

Hopefully this solves your problem

Thanks for the suggestion. I had already looked at this option and it is checked. I even tried unchecking and then checking it again. The strange thing is that it only affects all existing worksheets but not any new blank ones. I even tried uninstalling excel and re-installing it, with no change in the behaviour. Yet all the time I can see the tabs in other version of windows using the identical file.

mozman

Update: I solved the problem through trial and error. I was able to see the tabs again when I used the "full screen" option in the "view" menu, but of course the menu bar and ribbon disappear when you use this option. Using the short-cut ctrl+F1, I restored the ribbon and the tabs stayed. I still have no idea what caused the problem in the first place. Oh well ....

Well, I'm glad you were able to solve it. I won't ask you to recreate it to answer a question I had about it. If you tried this and can let me know the behavior in this case, please do:

If you started a blank workbook and saved it, then closed Excel, when you opened it would the tabs disappear?

Like I said, if you don't know, that's fine. Please don't try to recreate the problem to find the answer.

Thanks FightingScallion. Funny you should ask, I was actually in the process of creating a new spreadsheet with tabs with the idea of saving it and then checking what would happen. As I was filling the cells I noticed that the ribbon was missing, so I looked for the shortcut for hiding and showing the ribbon. As soon as I discovered the ctrl+F1 shortcut, I decided to try it out on my problem file, which I had open in the full screen mode. When it solved my problem, I closed the other file without saving and re-opening it. so the short answer is, I didn't get to try it, but I thought the longer answer was more interesting :-)

Mozman

The same thing happened to me on several spreadsheets. No idea why. I can create a new spreadsheet, see the worksheet tabs, save and close the file, reopen and everything is still fine. To fix a bad spreadsheet, I had to create a new spreadsheet, go into the corrupted spreadsheet and select all worksheets, then create a copy into the new spreadsheet. So far this seems to work.

If anyone knows why this is happening and a better solution than this work around, I would be very interested in hearing from you. Having to do this to salvage worksheets is a real pain in the OS.

I've tried the suggested fixes. Not really an option to cut and paste into a new file. I have tried this, but the files I am using have some locked cells and I lost this when pasting. Tried a couple different "paste special" and have not found the right combination, yet. What happens when I create a file in 64 bit and send it to a user that is using a 32 bit system? I suspect some problems?
One would think since Microsoft is the master of Vista and Office there would be more compatibility between the versions? I have done a lot of searching on google and this is one of the very few that even addresses this problem. I can't believe that it is not a more wide spread problem? There has to be an easy solution short of switching back to 32 bit Vista or XP???