Personal Macro Workbook (Excel 97, SR2)

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I have been casually observing this forum for several months and have learned a lot from you bright and helpful folks.

Recently, I bought a book (Sam’s Teach Yourself VBA….) to take a more systematic approach to learning VBA. The first lesson in the book deals with recording a simple macro . I followed the instructions and selected “Personal Macro Workbook” in the Macro Recorder Dialogue Box. After recording the macro and closing the workbook, Excel said something like “Cannot save Personal Macro Workbook in Startup Folder. Save Personal Macro Workbook elsewhere for now and move it to the Startup folder later.” That leaves me with two questions:
1. Why did my installation of Excel handle creation of Personal Macro Workbook differently?
2. Why can’t I seem to find the Excel Startup folder ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Is it possible that your XLStart directory is on a network drive that you do not have write access to? Another possibility is that your Personal.XLS file has gotten marked read only.

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Thanks for your quick response. In answer to your questions, my computer is not connected to a server and personal.xls is not checked as “read only.”

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Where are your Personal.xls and XLStart directory?

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I know this will sound pretty incredible, but finding the Excel startup folder is part of my problem. I am not having any luck locating it using “Explorer ” or “Find”. As for the Personal Macro Workbook, I saved it in My Documents since Excel would not save it in the Excel startup folder.

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In a -standard single- Office 97 installation, Personal .xls should go in c:program filesmicrosoft officeofficeXLStart. Does Excel run from your C drive or from elsewhere? Can you find any part of this folder tree using Explorer and starting from the C: root? Maybe if you create any missing parts of this folder tree and copy personal.xls to …XLStart, things will work. (I may be suggesting that you violate your corporate lan administration guidelines, but use ignorance as your defense.)

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Hello John,
I have tried to find “Xlstat” in C: program filesmicrosoft officeoffice to no avail.
In Explorer the tree branches as follows: C: – Program Files – Microsoft Office – Office – Startup. The problem is there is nothing in the “Startup” folder, but something called “Expwll32.”
Does this information help?

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Not criticising your spelling, just being precise; you need to look for “…officeXLSTart“, not “…officeXLStat”, and “…officestartup” is irrelevant to this problem. (My spelling is bad enough for both of us.) So if the path “c:program filesmicrosoft officeoffice” exists, select the “…office” folder, and create a child folder called “XLStart”. Then copy your personal.xls into it, and see if that helps. As Legare pointed out, make sure you personal.xls is not a read-only file. Let us know.

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Also, in some installations the xlstart directory is hidden – set your viewing options in Windows Explorer to view hidden files and directories. Then when you search (assuming your spelling is correct) you should see the xlstart directory if it is there.

Cheers

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Per your suggestion I reated a new “Xlstart” folder. I then moved Personal.xls to the Xlstart folder. New macros can now be successful saved to the Personal Macro Workbook and are available to any open excel workbooks.
Thanks for the helping hand.

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Though I think this may only be relevant if you have Office 2000, XLStart could be located at

 WindowsApplication DataMicrosoftExcelXLStart.

However I think that your XLStart does not exist, and hence your problem of not being able to save personal.xls.

If you cannot find the directory, try creating it as a subfolder off the Office folder of your office installation, which I take to be

C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice

.

If you cannot get your macro recording sorted after that, it may be necessary to re-install Excell.

Andrew C

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Hello Andrew,
Your suggestion reached me a little later than another contributor’s suggestion which was very similar and it did solve my problem. Thanks for your help today and everything you do on a daily basis.

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