Subj: Disappearing macros??

After upgrading to a new machine, installing Office, and pasting in a number of Visual Basic macros, they seem to be available on this machine in Excel files only randomly. We have a number of fairly complex macros that we need to run on files pretty often. The new machine

1) can open files that other users have edited and that have the macros, and then use them itself… but after re-opening later, the same macros are not available.
2) can create new files that SOMETIMES have the disappearing macros available, though usually not.


We even tried saving files as .xlsm instead of .xlsx, ("macro-enabled workbook") but that has the same issue: the macros are randomly unavailable. Saving as .xlsx is much more ideal for our group workflow.
We know how to create the macros again, and we can continually redo this process every time we open any file, but that really shouldn’t be necessary if we can configure this properly.

Any help with this would be great.

Running:
Windows 7, Version 6.1

Office Pro Plus 2010
Excel Version 14.0.6112.5000

Dear TMS,

I appreciate you taking the time to respond on this thread, but you actually haven't addressed my problem.

To clarify further, in our workplace, we save Excel files on a common server and access and edit them individually. Different machines each have a large number of macros saved locally and we run them individually when editing these files.

The user with the new machine created macros as he had on his previous machine, but it seems to be impossible to save them such that they don't simply disappear later.

Researching this problem online earlier, I read that .xlsx files are not macro-enabled, while .xlsm files are. Even though the macros have been working fine with all of our .xlsx files for years, now, we've experimented with using .xlsm files instead. But the user with the new machine still has the exact same problem: he can create and save the macros locally, but they are often (though not always!) gone when he reopens the same file later.

Does this make sense?

The only other way would be if you have an .xlsm workbook with all the macros in it, for instance called "My Macros.xlsm", and use the macros from that workbook. That workbook, "My Macros.xlsm" needs to be open so you can run them from "Macros in all open workbooks" in the Macro Pop-Up in an .xlsx workbook.
But this is essentially what TMShucks previously said about the shared workbook.

I agree with everybody above, save it as a xlsm and your problem will be solved.

Hi everyone. It's been almost a year since I posted the above question, that was really baffling me. The key piece of information that I was not understanding, was that the macros my team uses are generally stored in PERSONAL.xlsb. The trick is just to get that file open, and make sure all the macros are there.

Excel doesn't make this simple, requiring you to "unhide" the file, but then "hide" it again, otherwise it opens everything you use the program. It's resolved now, though. Just in case ya wondered..... :-)