Weird Formatting Problem

[KevinDimond]

I did a search on this board and was unable to find the specific problem. If this has been answered before, I apologize in advance for wasting anyone's time.

I have a spreadsheet that I inherited about a year ago. I have a specific problem that reoccurs on this spreadsheet (SS1) periodically. If you copy data from another spreadsheet (SS2) to SS1, the data will come over correctly but will be formatted in a font called "ＭＳ ゴシック". The SS2 formatting was in Arial font. To make matters more maddening, SS1 was also formatted (in every cell) to Arial as well.

Now the worst part is that some of the tabs in SS1 do not have this issue. They will paste from SS2 correctly with no issue. I'm forced to Paste>Special Values>Text/Values into most tabs on SS1. This normally wouldn't be more of a mild inconvenience. However, a lot of the stuff I'm combining into this spreadsheet needs formatting brought with it. I hate having to change the Font and Font size on all of these pastes.

I'm pretty close to scrapping the entire spreadsheet and starting from scratch resolve the problem but with the amount of data in here, it might take awhile. Hopefully someone has encountered this and can help me resolve it easily.

Please don't make me murder this spreadsheet with a File Shredding program. It has a family to feed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Worf]

That's Japanese for the MS Gothic font. Does it appear in any language at your font list?

 

[KevinDimond]

That's Japanese for the MS Gothic font. Does it appear in any language at your font list?

I think I know what you mean. I have "MS Gothic" listed as a choice but not as it appears when I paste with the Japanese characters. I do have other fonts in the list for other languages. I'm not sure if that's related or not. It seems to be quite an extensive list which is impressive as this is a work machine and I never added any fonts.

 

[Worf]

SS1 was also formatted (in every cell) to Arial as well.

This is the hard part to understand. Are you pasting in the tab's used range or at a "virgin" location?
Example: if the last used cell going down and right is z50, then v40 would be in the used range, but bb60 would be "virgin".

 

[KevinDimond]

This is the hard part to understand. Are you pasting in the tab's used range or at a "virgin" location?
Example: if the last used cell going down and right is z50, then v40 would be in the used range, but bb60 would be "virgin".

It usually over existing data, already formatted to Arial, 10pt. If you do a 'virgin' location like you're specifying, it happens with one of those locations as well. As I said, this is quite maddening. I'm wondering if it's because of a very old version of Excel that was used to create this file.

 

[Worf]

It usually over existing data, already formatted to Arial, 10pt. If you do a 'virgin' location like you're specifying, it happens with one of those locations as well. As I said, this is quite maddening. I'm wondering if it's because of a very old version of Excel that was used to create this file.

• Does your workbook have macros?
• What Excel version are you using?
• What's the file extension of your workbook?

 

[KevinDimond]

• Does your workbook have macros?
• What Excel version are you using?
• What's the file extension of your workbook?

No Macros.
2003 (11.8342.8341) SP3
.xls

I do have Excel 2010 on a separate machine. I wonder if I converted this file to 2010 (xlsx) and then saved it back to (xls) if it would lose this weird issue. Hmmm.

 

[Worf]

No Macros.
2003 (11.8342.8341) SP3
.xls

I do have Excel 2010 on a separate machine. I wonder if I converted this file to 2010 (xlsx) and then saved it back to (xls) if it would lose this weird issue. Hmmm.

Good idea. See if the compatibility checker has something interesting to say when you save it at Excel 2010 with a xls extension.

 

[KevinDimond]

Good idea. See if the compatibility checker has something interesting to say when you save it at Excel 2010 with a xls extension.

I found a crapload of old name definitions and some other very strange things when porting to 2010. I haven't seen anything weird happen yet. I'll report back if something happens when I compile the file tomorrow.