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Excel Crashing Question

Dear Experts,

This morning I had a user working in Excel 2007, who reportedly after clicking "Excel Options" (from the "windows orb" menu) crashed out of the program with the error "Microsoft Office Excel has stopped working". He had 14 spreadsheets open within the same instance of Excel, which might seem a lot but his computer specifications are above average, as stated below, so I think it should be able to handle it:

Make: HP (Desktop)
Model: VW168ET
O/S: Windows 7 Pro (64bit)
Proc: Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo CPU 3.2GHz
RAM: 4GB
HDD: 500GB

The spreadsheets that were open are of the following size:

Spreadsheet 1 = 200 kb
Spreadsheet 2 = 2600 kb
Spreadsheet 3 = 1600 kb
Spreadsheet 4 = 430 kb
Spreadsheet 5 = 1600 kb
Spreadsheet 6 = 160 kb
Spreadsheet 7 = 2350 kb
Spreadsheet 8 = 700 kb
Spreadsheet 9 = 700 kb
Spreadsheet 10 = 3500 kb
Spreadsheet 11 = 1600 kb
Spreadsheet 12 = 890 kb
Spreadsheet 13 = 440 kb
Spreadsheet 14 = 3010 kb
Total = 19780 kb

System memory taken up by Excel at the time of crash approx 99000 kb.

The event viewer for the machine reported the following information:

General:

Faulting application name: EXCEL.EXE, version: 12.0.6545.5000, time stamp: 0x4c654035
Faulting module name: EXCEL.EXE, version: 12.0.6545.5000, time stamp: 0x4c654035
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00535293
Faulting process id: 0x2d0
Faulting application start time: 0x01cbcf4e2f76e4a3
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE
Report Id: 1e81fbc3-3b47-11e0-ac3f-000ffed00275

Details:

+ System

- Provider

[ Name] Application Error

- EventID 1000

[ Qualifiers] 0

Level 2

Task 100

Keywords 0x80000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2011-02-18T10:09:07.000000000Z

EventRecordID 5921

Channel Application

Computer ###########################

Security

- EventData

EXCEL.EXE
12.0.6545.5000
4c654035
EXCEL.EXE
12.0.6545.5000
4c654035
c0000005
00535293
2d0
01cbcf4e2f76e4a3
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE
1e81fbc3-3b47-11e0-ac3f-000ffed00275

So based on the above information, is there anyway to tell what the problem is??? It would not be such a big problem if the end user had not kept reporting that this keeps on happening, but this is the only time I have been able to record the information. The user is not able to advise the keypresses leading up to the ultimate key press which caused the problem,other than that he was "working away". I was hoping details in the event log might suggest what the problem was. Any feedback contributing towards the resolution will be much appreciated.

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

mscanlon06851

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ouch_mybrain_

ASKER

Thanks mScanLon .... I know how to set Excel so that new spreadsheets open in new excel instances. Will also have to check the spreadsheets to make sure it hasn't been what I call "row spammed", where empty rows go up to the million mark - commonly user error when they apply a formula or a sort/filter to a column header. Will also tell the end user to manage his work better and to not have so many sheets open at once. Will have to check if we have excel 64bit under our corporate volume license.

Thanks for your help. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and accept as solution, there's no point in me keeping this thread open.

ouch_mybrain_

ASKER

Good tips and advice on what to do however no defined solution provided, however given the nature of the question I would agree that without really knowing EXACTLY what happened (which I cannot provide) it is difficult to give a solution.