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The xlam project should be visible in the VBE if you have it loaded, so you can alter the code there and then run a line of code like:

Code:

workbooks("addin name.xlam").save

from the immediate window.

When I open the xlam file, nothing appears (and nothing appears in the “Switch windows” list)???

GOOD NEWS: I’ve worked out where My Documents went to! When logged in as Dale, I had “Show hidden files, folders, or drives” on, but when I created Dale2, Mr Gates switched the setting back to off. So, the folder structure was there ever since Dale was deleted, but hidden. Phew. Now, I must confess to feeling slightly embarrassed about this, but I can handle that. Having the files back is quite sufficient compensation!

What I’ve now done is turn off the hidden attribute for the My Documents folders/files structure, then copy and paste it all into c:UsersDale2My Documents. This seemed more straightforward than trying to take ownership of the files (which didn’t work last time).

What next? I’ll decide in a day or two (I need a rest from this). But, in the meantime, thanks for all the help and advice (particularly Gerald and Ted).

Having reviewed the situation, I realise that my problem has now changed. The question now is, how do I restore my backed up files? That good old phrase mission-critical comes to mind!

This summarises the backup situation:

[*]I have a folder on Dale2’s desktop called Dale, containing folders called Desktop, Favorites, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos. They contain folders and files that I can see and access.
[*]I have a backup on an external hard drive (created by Windows 7’s “Backup and restore”) contain all of the above PLUS MyDocuments.
[*]I’ve tried various ways of getting the contents of the Dale folder (the one on Dale2’s desktop) into the correct places, without success. However, my latest effort seems to have worked. As an example, to get my photos into Dale2’s MyPictures folder, I clicked the Dale folder, clicked the My Pictures subfolder, selected all sub-subfolders, copied, and pasted into Windows Explorer (in c:UsersDale2My Pictures). This was successful and I can now view and access the files via both c:UsersDale2My Pictures and LibrariesPictures.
[*]However, I have not been able to find a way of restoring the My Documents folder from the external hard drive. For example, I tried the following:

[*]Click on the external drive in Windows Explorer. A list of backups appears on the right.
[*]Click on the relevant backup. A dialog appears and I choose “Restore files for all users of this computer”. The “Restore files (Advanced)” dialog appears.
[*]Click “Browse for folders”. A screen called “Browse the backup for folders or drives” appears, as follows:

[*]I click “Backup of C” on the right. “Users” appears in its place. I click Users and a list of users appears in its place (Dale, Dale2, Public, Temp). I click Dale (which, interestingly, is a more faded colour, maybe it’s “hidden”) and my folders/files appear in its place. Everything’s there, including the Documents folder and its files.
[*]I select the Documents folder (which is also “faded”) and click the “Add folder” button.
[*]I continue through the wizard, choosing to specify a location of c:UsersDale2My Documents (original location doesn’t work either) and “Restore the folders to their original subfolders” (unticking this doesn’t work either).

[/list]

So, I’m now in the situation where I can restore my photos and music and videos, but not my documents. I’ve realised that doing a total reinstall may not be too clever at this stage, as that may result in me losing my photos/music/videos as well as my documents!

What next? I believe that the situation is recoverable — after all, I can see all my documents on the external drive. Maybe I’m just not handling the restore correctly. Or maybe I need different restore software (after all, the backed up files are just zip files (I think)).

Any advice for a lost soul?

Okay, this is getting messy:

[*]Backed up Dale’s files (fortunately!).
[*]Created and logged in under a new administrator user account (Dale2).
[*]Deleted the old user (Dale), using the Keep Files button.
[*]Did the first part of This blog will guide you (“How to take ownership in Windows 7”).
[*]When I came to the second part (“How to grant permissions in Wndows 7”), there seemed to be nothing to do (Dale2 already had the required permissions), presumably because Dale2 is an administrator.
[*]Most of Dale’s files were in a folder called Dale on the Dale2’s desktop. Desktop, Favorites, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos are there, but not My Documents. Not even an empty folder.
[*]Simple, I said, just restore My Documents from my newly-made backup. Did this, electing to maintain folders.
[*]But, although the restore took a long time, the files don’t appear to be there, as shown in the picture below.

Well, I guess the good news is that this seems to confirm that something was wrong! The bad news is that I’m not clear how to get operational again. Maybe it’s time to adopt Ted Myers’ suggestion of completely reinstalling. A pretty major task, since I’ll have to restore all my backups (hopefully successfully) and reinstall programs and recustomise everything.

I’d much prefer to avoid this, but maybe it’s the best option now?

If there are none of your files in the TEMP user profile folder, then it could not be your user profile renamed. And since you still do not see your User profile “Dale” under C:Users, then something is amiss.

Your “Dale” user profile obviously still exists and you can access your files, but something is not right, and Windows will still maintain that TEMP user profile in your Users folder until things are remedied. Because of that it is probably best:

To create yourself a new administrator user account.
Then log in as the new user.
Next, remove your old user “Dale” and be sure to select keep files.
Finally, take ownership of your old user files. This blog will guide you through the take ownership of your old user files.

Right, I’ll have a go at it. I’ll do a backup first, in case something goes wrong. But, before I start, is there some way of exporting all my Windows customisations from Dale to Dale2? I thought there was, but can’t find it.

By the way, you said in your first post that you have a new version of Windows 7 on a new laptop. Does that mean you upgraded the Windows 7 to another edition of Windows 7 on your new laptop? If so, something about the upgrade may have caused your User profile to disappear from the C:Users folder.

No, no upgrade involved. Brand new Dell laptop with Windows 7 pre-installed.

Your graphic in post 9 shows “Dale” as an active profile whose size is 42.8GB. And you are able to log in and out as “Dale” without any error messages. So your original user “Dale” is intact, but not visible under Users.

Which raises the question, I guess, is there in fact a “problem”. Maybe leaving as-is is an option.

Log in as “Dale”, and go to C:Users, right click on the user TEMP and select properties to see if there is reference to “Dale” in the full name field. Also when you right click on TEMP and select Properties, what GB size does it show for user TEMP? If it is 42.8GB, then user TEMP is not a temporary user account, but is in fact user account “Dale”.

There are no references to Dale, except that Dale is listed as an option to share with, and is listed in the Security tab as follows:

A Temp user account created by Windows is based on the “Default” user profile and only has default settings, and would be very small as shown in your graphic in post 9 for the Default user profile. It is created by Windows to enable you to get into Windows when your normal user profile cannot be found by Windows or is too damaged to log on. Check out the TEMP user account to see if it contains folders and settings that are in fact your “Dale” account.

There’s nothing in any of TEMP’s folders (not even hidden files).

I would not do any dragging or copying of user folders or files.

Thanks for the advice.

I hope this makes some sense. It is almost 3:24AM here and I better to to sleep now.

It surely does make sense, and is much appreciated.

WHAT NEXT
Maybe the answer is to do nothing and just monitor the situation? I guess that involves checking on TEMP occasionally to make sure there are no files in there, and watching out for any error messages.

More information follows.

Logged on as Dale, I create a new user called Dale2 (with administrator rights). This picture shows what Dale2 sees:

I then logged off and logged back in as Dale, and this is what he sees:

I note the following:

[*]Dale2 can’t see DesktopDale
[*]Dale2 doesn’t have a folder called DesktopDale2
[*]On the other hand, Dale can see DesktopComputerCUsersDale2

So, does this confirm the thought that I’ve just inadvertently dragged Dale to the wrong place? Maybe I can fix the problem by dragging Dale under Users? Or is that too risky?

Althernatively, could I fix the problem by migrating to Dale2, like this:

[*]Logged on as Dale, copy all Dale’s files into UsersPublic
[*]Then, logged in as Dale2, copy all Dale’s files from UsersPublic to UsersDale2
[*]Then delete the user Dale.

One things for sure, I don’t know what I’m doing here!

Thanks, Gerald. But this is hurting my head quite a bit. If I understand you correctly, Dale should appear in two places: directly under Desktop and also repeated under DesktopComputerCUsers. And my files should appear under both? (Presumably DesktopDale is just a “view”, repeating what’s in DesktopComputerCUsersDale.) Okay, I think I understand that. But if DesktopDale is just a view of DesktopComputerCUsersDale, where is DesktopComputerCUsersDale? Maybe that’s a silly question.

As to the DesktopComputerCUsersTEMP, no I didn’t get warned about it being created. Didn’t even know it was there until I took the screenshot. By the way, when I go into “Configure Advanced User Profile Properties”, I see this:

Doing a system restore scares me a bit, as I’ve never done that before. Presumably I have to back my files up first. Maybe I should instead try your suggestion of creating a new user account. But how do I transfer my files to the new user?

Sorry for all the questions, but there seems to be great potential for screwing this up right royally. And I must say I’m confused as to how it happened. Brand new Dell laptop with preloaded software. Grrr.

Dale,

The folder you see under “Desktop” named “Dale” is being displayed with your full name from the local user account. Under users the folder name “Temp” is account name for your account.

I’m pretty sure that if you go to Control Panel | User Accounts | User Accounts and click on “Manage User Accounts” you’ll see the user name is “Temp”. If you select “Temp” then click on Properties you’ll most likely see your name (Dale) in the “Full Name” field.

Joe

I can’t see the exact links you specify. But if I go to “Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsUser AccountsManage Accounts”, two accounts are listed, being “Dale” (an administrator) and “Guest” (which is “off”).

STEVE: “Show hidden files, folders, or drives” was off. If I turn if on, I can now see an additional folder under “Users” called “Default”, and a shortcut to “Dale”. “Default” has a number of empty folders under it (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc). I can’t remember whether I created the shortcut.

TED: Expanding “Dale” reveals all my files and folders. Nothing’s missing; it’s just that the “Dale” folder is in the wrong place.

I wonder if I just accidentally dragged “Dale” to a new position, without realising it? In which case, maybe I could just drag it back? Or do nothing?

Okay, I’m confused.

Hi Don

Here’s the snippet:

For Each MyParagraph In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs
    If MyParagraph.Range.Font.Shading.BackgroundPatternColorIndex  wdAuto Then
        MyMessage$ = "The document contains text with a coloured background."
        MyParagraph.Range.Select
        GoTo ErrorProcessing
    End If
Next MyParagraph

Ah. That explains my variable results.

Thanks, Klaus
Dale

Hi

As promised, attached is an attempt at checking for failed hyperlinks (and INCLUDEPICTURE targets) in Word documents.

1. Ah, another subtlety. “MyField.Code.Style” returns the paragraph style, whereas my two lines of codes (set and modify MyRange) define a range that returns the character style (which, in the example I gave, is what I wanted).

2. I must confess I had all sorts of problems finding a range definition that returned the character style (rather than the underlying paragraph style). If I’m right, the key is to have an end point of “End-1” or “End-2” (or more), although presumably the end point has to be within the hyperlink. Having said that, I get variable results. I think it’s to do with how the character style has been applied. But “End-1” seems to consistently return a range that gives me the character style.

3. I noticed your “Replace” statement. Word 97 doesn’t recognise it, so presumably it was added later. So much easier!

Thanks for your help
Dale

Hi Chris

That’s really kind and will get me off to a flying start. I’ll post something back here when I (eventually) get somewhere with it.

Thanks
Dale