How to remove 'System' menu in toolbar Excel for Mac 2011

[MervynG]

Hi,

Opened a spreadsheet relating to room accommodation for my son on a school trip and a new drop down menu appeared in the toolbar entitles 'system'. I assume it relates to Visual Basic and some macro. However, the spreadsheet does not appear to have any macros and as I have no access to the original source and server I am unable to remove this.

Any advice on how to get rid of this unwanted toolbar very welcome.

Thanks

Mervyn

 

[RoryA]

Welcome to the forum.

I can't remember the exact commands offhand and my Mac is at home, but it should be something like View - toolbars - customize and then uncheck the toolbar.

 

[MervynG]

Rory, Thanks for the quick response. Sadly nothing I do in 'View' removes 'System'.

I used to have File, Edit, View, History etc at the very top of the screen but since opening this one spreadsheet "System has appeared before 'File.'

If I click on System the drop down options are: New Costing, Open Costing, Save to Enquiry, Copy and Rename, Close and About. Clicking on any of these brings up a small warning pane: .....xls cannot be accessed. The File may be read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or, the server the document is stored on may not be responding.

I can then 'Retry' which does repeats itself or 'Cancel' which throwsup another warning pane 'Microsoft Visual Basic 400'

 

[RoryA]

Do you get a menu if you right-click a blank part of the menu bar?

 

[MervynG]

Hi again Rory,

No. I attach a screenshot of the relevant part.

Mervyn

 

[MervynG]

Sorry. Pasting image does this!! Wesbite says I can't add attachments!

 

[MervynG]

Hi

Have a look at this url where I have uploaded an image of the offending menu I'd like to lose. https://imgur.com/8QvmSk0

 

[Jon Peltier]

Do you get a different pop-up menu if you right-click on the System menu? (Right click on Mac by clicking with two fingers.)

What happened is that the workbook you opened had this custom menu attached to it, and whoever designed the workbook didn't know about removing the menu when the workbook was closed. So the menu remains long after the workbook is deleted. You need to delete the menu another way. Using the right-click menu should show a Delete entry.

If you are familiar with VBA, you could open the VB Editor, and in the Immediate Window type this line and press Enter:

CommandBars("System").Delete

 

[MervynG]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for this.

If I right click, the menu content is the same.

When I open the Visual Basic Editor, a Project window opens and it displays 'VBA Project (Workbook1)' with a triangle on its left hand side. The sub-lines underneath this line are 'Sheet1 (Sheet1)' and underneath this line 'ThisWorkbook'.

By clicking on the last 2 lines I can highlight them. If, for example, I double click on either of 'Sheet1' or 'ThisWorkbook', another window opens entitled either 'Workbook1 - Sheet1 (Code)' or 'Workbook1 - ThisWorkbook (Code)'. Both of these results are blank windows which have '(General)' and (Declarations)' drop down tabs at the top under the title. The '(General)' tab has a further dropdown menu entitled 'Workbook'. The 'Declarations' tab has one entitled 'Declarations.'

If I click on 'General' in 'Workbook1 - Sheet1 (Code)' it displays 'Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range ) and below that 'End Sub'. The right hand tab changes from 'Declarations' to 'Open' when 'General' has been clicked. The 'SelectionChange' drop down menu has 7 options from 'Activate' to 'SelectionChange'.


If I click on 'General' in 'Workbook1 - ThisWorkbook (Code)' it displays 'Private Sub Workbook_Open() and below that 'End Sub'. The right hand tab changes from 'Declarations' to 'Open' when 'General' has been clicked. The 'Open' menu has 20 options from 'Activate' to 'WindowReSize'



Does this help as I'm not sure where I should enter your suggested code and what 'The Immediate Window' is.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Nope. That's just looking at the empty worksheet and workbook code windows of the blank new workbook that was created when you opened Excel.

Go to the View menu in the VB editor, and click on Immediate Window.

Paste this into the Immediate Window and press Enter:

CommandBars("System").Delete