If you find that Excel 2003, (or another office 2003 application for that matter) is not working correctly, you may not necessarily have to reinstall it. You can use the Detect and Repair feature to automatically examine your office files, and replace any damaged or missing ones.

 

If Excel 2003 crashes frequently, causes errors, or otherwise fails to perform adequately, it could be a candidate for detect and repair.

 

To use detect and repair from within Excel, choose Help->Detect and Repair from the menu bar. This action will display the Detect and Repair dialogue box.

 

 

In this box, you can choose to have your shortcuts restored as the direct and repair feature fixes your office files. You can also choose to have any customized settings (like the ones that can be modified in the options dialogue box) restored to their default settings. You can specify your choices with check marks in the appropriate boxes. By default, detect and repair will restore your shortcuts, and will retain your customized settings.

 

To start the repair process, click the Start button. While detect and repair is working, you may be asked to provide the Office 2003 installation source files. These are normally available on a CD, or possibly from a shared network folder. In addition, you may be asked to close applications that are currently running on your system.

 

 

After you click the Start button on the Detect and Repair dialogue box, you will see the Microsoft Office install/repair box shown above. If you decide that you want to stop the Detect and Repair process, just click the Cancel button.

 

Detect and Repair will replace faulty Microsoft Office application files, but it will not fix or replace corrupt or lost documents or workbooks. This is not an Auto-Recover tool.

 

If you find that detect and repair does not solve the problems that Excel 2003 is having, you may have to perform a complete reinstall of Excel, or the entire Office suite.