Vista - Windows Vista and Excel 2000 -- incompatibility?

I asked about this issue some 6 weeks ago on two of these newsgroups, and
got a lot of advice, but no solution. Having been away for a month, I'm now
back trying to resolve what is still a very annoying problem, and I hope
that someone out there can help me.

I'm using Excel 2000 on a Vista desktop and on an XP laptop. When using
Vista, cell formatting will not work any more. For example, if I try to
apply date or custom date formatting to a cell containing '8/6/08', the cell
is not formatted as a date. The problem exists even if Excel is opened in
Safe mode, exists in both new and existing Excel files, and exists
regardless of whether the format is applied before or after the date is
entered. BUT if one of the same files is opened using the XP computer, date
formatting works as usual.

I've searched newsgroups and the web generally, and can find no other
examples of this problem. Is this an incompatibility issue between Vista
and Excel 2000? If so, does anyone know of a workaround? Can anyone help
with any other suggestions?

--
Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia
---------------------------------------------
Please reply only to the list/newsgroup so that all may benefit.

Only Office components from Office 2003 & later are fully compatible with
Vista, that being said its generally Outlook that has most issues, I'v not
seen any mention of excell issues, but then you might get more info by
posting direct to an Excel group.

"Lindsay Graham" <LDGraham@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OfiWIaH9IHA.3648@xxxxxx

Hi Lindsay,

I'm running Office 2000 (excluding Outlook) on Vista Home Premium and have no problems with any aspect of Excel - including cell
formatting.

Have you tried running Excel's 'Detect and Repair' facility (see under Help)?
Is your copy of Excel 2000 fully patched (under Help|About, it should report the version as 9.0.8950 SP-3)?

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


"Lindsay Graham" <LDGraham@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:OfiWIaH9IHA.3648@xxxxxx

It was mentioned on here, I believe, some time ago tht Excel 2000 WILL run
correctly
under, given that all traces of newer approval Office software are removed.
I also seem
to remember that removing this "approval" software is not always an easy
task.

If I am wrong, surely someone will correct me ;>)

My solution is to go back to my old machine and run XP or 2000 version of
Windows.
I run Linux on my laptop, and am very happy with it.

My wife can have this Vista desktop for email. It should be good enough for
that.

I use Office '97 (less Outlook) on my Vista Home Premium with no problem.
I have created many spreadsheets with Excel.

BTW, what has Linux got to do with Excel?

"HLS" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:moZkk.17987$89.8306@xxxxxx

Thanks, "macropod" -- these are two suggestions that have not been made (or
tried by me) before.

I tried several times to run Excel's 'Detect and Repair' facility. Most
times, I got an error message "Windows Installer: This installation package
could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access
it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows
Installer program." I checked for Windows Installer and find that I have
Windows Installer Unicode Version 4.0.6000.16386 and also Windows Live
Installer version 12.0.1471.1025. Are either of these what Excel says it
could not open?

On one occasion, however, the error message did not appear, the installation
disk was requested, and after chugging away for some time, Excel simply said
Setup was completed successfully. Is that what I should have expected?

I have 3 networked computers (Vista desktop, XP desktop and XP laptop) and
all have Office 2000. I successfully updated both XP machines to Office
2000 SP3 (using the installation disks), but the update failed on the Vista
computer "The expected version of the product was not found on your system."
What does this mean and how can I instal SP3?

--
Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia
---------------------------------------------
Please reply only to the list/newsgroup so that all may benefit.

"macropod" <macropod@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:#Ca2y3H9IHA.3368@xxxxxx

Thanks, "HLS". No newer Office software has been installed on this
computer. What do you mean by "approval" software?

I'd love to give Vista away (I'd almost be prepared to pay someone to take
it away <g>), but that's not an option on this computer, as it came with
Vista pre-installed.

--
Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia
---------------------------------------------
Please reply only to the list/newsgroup so that all may benefit.

"HLS" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:moZkk.17987$89.8306@xxxxxx

Hi Lindsay,

Running Detect & Repair does not necessarily result in any 'feedback' messages. The Detect & Repair process runs the Windows
Installer (msiexec.exe), which tries to load the data1.msi file. I believe the error messages were the result of that file not being
found or being corrupted. In that case, the Windows Installer should prompt you to insert the installation CD. Why it eventually
worked anyway, I don't know - did you perhaps have an Office 2000 CD in the drive at that stage?

WRT the updates, did you install Office 2000 SR1, then SP2 followed by SP3? From memory, SP2 required SR1 to be installed beforehand
and SP3 required SP2 to be installed beforehand.

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


"Lindsay Graham" <LDGraham@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:%23dInJHU9IHA.4820@xxxxxx

Office trial version = 'approval'

"Lindsay Graham" <LDGraham@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:utFU2LU9IHA.356@xxxxxx