Excel Annoyances

CHART INTERACTION ANNOYANCES

PRINT AN EXCEL 97 CHART FROM POWERPOINT

The Annoyance:

I use Excel 97, and I tried to print out a PowerPoint 97 presentation that has an embedded Excel chart—but the page came out blank. This can’t be a case of incompatible versions, because both programs were from Office 97. What’s going on?

The Fix:

I’ll bet you were trying to print the chart at a resolution higher than your printer is capable of. To check, open PowerPoint, choose Tools → Options, and select the Print tab. If the “Print inserted objects at printer resolution” box isn’t checked, check it now. You also should ensure that your embedded chart isn’t selected when you try to print the slide. To deselect the chart, click any blank spot on the PowerPoint slide.

CHART MACRO CRASHES EXCEL

The Annoyance:

I’m an impoverished technical writer running Excel 97 under a primeval Windows 95 OS, and I’m having consistent problems with a macro I wrote to create a chart on an existing worksheet. The error I get is singularly unhelpful: This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor. When I click the Details button in the warning box, I get a similarly unhelpful message: Excel caused an invalid page fault in module Excel.exe at 0137:30118912. And then Excel quits; just quits. It doesn’t mark the location in the macro where the error occurs, so I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. Any ideas?

The Fix:

You might be trying to create your new ...