Frustrating Excel problem

[Picard]

I hope what I say makes sense. I only have basic knowledge about Excel.

Quick context ... School mark sheets. We used an original file that was duplicated for each class in the school with all the leaners' details entered. As the marks are entered, an IF formula calculates a code that appears next to the mark. The document was created by the Departement of Education.

There are seemingly some active content in the document because a message bar sometimes appear at the top prompting you to enable the active content or not. If one enables the active content the formulas and other features work fine. But when you have enabled it, or not, once or twice the message doesn't appear anymore ... it's apparently a new feature that the prompting is limited.

The problem is however is that some documents now have the active content enabled and others not. And I can't find a way to enable the stuff. The forumulas are still there they are just not responding.

I have checked the Trust Center settings, but that doesn't help me because all settings, for both the documents that work and doesn't work, are exactly the same.

 

[SBSP]

What active content ? as in Active X stuff ?

You can enable an disable formula calculations, I assume you are using 2007 or 2010.

File -> Options -> Formulas : Make sure Workbook calculation has been set to "automatic" this will turn on/off formula calculations in all sheets.

 

[Picard]

Thanks, that fixed it.

Some files' formula setting was changed to manual.

But now another question comes up ... how did this setting change? None of my colleague have the intention or savvy to go and do this.

 

[DJ...]

Why not just write a macro to automatically switch it on when the file is opened?

 

[Picard]

Why not just write a macro to automatically switch it on when the file is opened?

I will try and figure out tomorrow why the setting has changed, then I might consider other options.

 

[DJ...]

I will try and figure out tomorrow why the setting has changed, then I might consider other options.

If you open a document that forces automatic calculations to be switched off then this can happen. I'm not sure what else could do it though apart from the user stuffing around with settings they don't understand or willingly switching it off. Pretty easy to just write a macro to switch on when the file is opened. Would take the better part of a minute and at least you can be sure it will always be switched on for everyone?