Hi Lindsay,

Running Detect & Repair does not necessarily result in any 'feedback' messages. The Detect & Repair process runs the Windows
Installer (msiexec.exe), which tries to load the data1.msi file. I believe the error messages were the result of that file not being
found or being corrupted. In that case, the Windows Installer should prompt you to insert the installation CD. Why it eventually
worked anyway, I don't know - did you perhaps have an Office 2000 CD in the drive at that stage?

WRT the updates, did you install Office 2000 SR1, then SP2 followed by SP3? From memory, SP2 required SR1 to be installed beforehand
and SP3 required SP2 to be installed beforehand.

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


"Lindsay Graham" wrote in message ...
Thanks, "macropod" -- these are two suggestions that have not been made (or tried by me) before.

I tried several times to run Excel's 'Detect and Repair' facility. Most times, I got an error message "Windows Installer: This
installation package could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application
vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer program." I checked for Windows Installer and find that I have Windows
Installer Unicode Version 4.0.6000.16386 and also Windows Live Installer version 12.0.1471.1025. Are either of these what Excel
says it could not open?

On one occasion, however, the error message did not appear, the installation disk was requested, and after chugging away for some
time, Excel simply said Setup was completed successfully. Is that what I should have expected?

I have 3 networked computers (Vista desktop, XP desktop and XP laptop) and all have Office 2000. I successfully updated both XP
machines to Office 2000 SP3 (using the installation disks), but the update failed on the Vista computer "The expected version of
the product was not found on your system." What does this mean and how can I instal SP3?

--
Lindsay Graham
Canberra, Australia
---------------------------------------------
Please reply only to the list/newsgroup so that all may benefit.

"macropod" wrote in message ...
Hi Lindsay,

I'm running Office 2000 (excluding Outlook) on Vista Home Premium and have no problems with any aspect of Excel - including cell
formatting.

Have you tried running Excel's 'Detect and Repair' facility (see under Help)?
Is your copy of Excel 2000 fully patched (under Help|About, it should report the version as 9.0.8950 SP-3)?

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


"Lindsay Graham" wrote in message ...
I asked about this issue some 6 weeks ago on two of these newsgroups, and got a lot of advice, but no solution. Having been away
for a month, I'm now back trying to resolve what is still a very annoying problem, and I hope that someone out there can help me.

I'm using Excel 2000 on a Vista desktop and on an XP laptop. When using Vista, cell formatting will not work any more. For
example, if I try to apply date or custom date formatting to a cell containing '8/6/08', the cell is not formatted as a date.
The problem exists even if Excel is opened in Safe mode, exists in both new and existing Excel files, and exists regardless of
whether the format is applied before or after the date is entered. BUT if one of the same files is opened using the XP
computer, date formatting works as usual.

I've searched newsgroups and the web generally, and can find no other examples of this problem. Is this an incompatibility
issue between Vista and Excel 2000? If so, does anyone know of a workaround? Can anyone help with any other suggestions?

--
Lindsay Graham