End User Recovery of Corrupted Excel Workbooks
Cheryl Tupper

This fix has worked for files corrupted by a software upgrade of Microsoft Office products.

It may also correct other problems where the user is able to open a workbook but cannot save it.

1. Open a new .xls file (a.k.a. "workbook").  Name and save it.

2. Open the corrupted workbook.

3. Each spreadsheet in the workbook is represented on a sheet tab toward the bottom of the screen. Click on the leftmost tab to select it.

4. Pointing at the tab of the sheet you want to recover, right click.

6. The first field in the Move or Copy dialogue box is labeled, "To book: ". It lists every workbook you currently have open. Select the workbook that you created in Step 1.

7. The next field is labeled, "Before sheet: ". Scroll down (if necessary), and select "(move to end)".

8. Under that field is a check box labeled, "Create a copy." Check it.

9. Hit the OK button. Your active window will become the copy of the sheet in the new workbook.

10. Save the new workbook and navigate back to the corrupted workbook. (If you cannot save the new workbook at this point, this fix is not going to solve your problem.)

11. Moving one at a time from left to right, click on the next sheet tab, and repeat Step 4 through Step 10 until every sheet has been copied to the new workbook.

That's it . . .  

Cheryl Tupper 

July, 2000

For more information, contact cheryl@solutionarchitech.com

ACD "Port Pull" Project
Puget Sound Energy
Data & Applications Group

Overview

The IT Help Desk employs an Automated Call Distribution (ACD) system which reports on the way that incoming calls from clients are handled.

Barbie on the Half Shell:
The Plastic Goddess

published in "The Blue Stocking", 1995, Portland Oregon

Beastie Barbie

My daughter’s kindergarten homework: Bring to class an ethnic or family icon that reflects your heritage; parents, provide a note explaining its significance. We have to talk about this. She says, “What does heritage mean? What’s an icon?”

“You know… like those African masks, or a statue of Jesus maybe, or those dolls in all the different countries’ costumes,” I fumbled. “It’s a magical sort of statue or doll that you and your whole family really like a lot.”

“You mean like Barbie?” she said. “I like Barbie a lot. She’s kinda magical, glamourie. And Granma has Barbies. You have Barbies. So she’s important to our whole family.” My daughter bubbled over with pride at having grasped an obviously difficult concept. And while I was trying to figure out how to correct her without hurting that pride, I realized she was right.

I sent to class an 8 x 10 glossy of the plastic goddess with the following explanation:

Barbie is a sad but proper symbol of our family’s heritage. We share her shallow West Coast roots. Our ancestors are Irish-Italian-French-English-German miners and farmers, prospectors and fortune hunters. They quietly married each other and the occasional Native American. They worked very hard and spoke very little, least of which about the place they’d fled across thousands of miles. And of our Native American heritage, even less was spoken, even less is known. So Barbie, teethed on by two generations now, is all we’ve got.

Barbie is our doll, our idol, our ideal. Reject or embrace her top-heavy message, but acknowledge what the doll says about our culture. Such acknowledgment prompted me to begin the “Beastie Barbie” series of assemblages.

The Beastie Barbie series is about transformation, about taking the fluff-monster standard of femininity, setting it on its ear, and getting beyond it.

The first piece in the series, “The Emergence of Beastie Barbie,” was inspired by a dear friend’s midlife crisis. Seems this beautiful, intelligent, sensitive woman had spent so many years trying to girdle herself into the perfect little “Professional Barbie” that she ended up knowing nothing about her own happiness, didn’t even know in which direction it might lie.

The piece is about finding that direction. Its central figure is a classic Barbie, just emerging from a black urn. Her hair has been burned in battle, and her serene face has been transformed with war paint. Other pieces in the ongoing series include “Sea of Barbies” and “Barbie in Chains.”

Many other Northwest artists are exploring Barbie’s image and impact with collage, constructions, and performance art.

Barbie on a Stick

Teagan McDonald has never had a BMW. Or a set of matching dishes. She can’t afford lattes. She is an artist.

Almost every summer weekend you can find poster child/artist McDonald moving slowly through the Seattle Metro system with a heavily laden hand truck. Winding her way, packing her wares to the Fremont Market, she is two tight pigtails and a pair of large glasses behind a stack of some of the brightest, most absurd constructions you have ever seen.

Her artwork includes floral arrangements made with tampons, and a shadowbox labyrinth called, “The Amazing Game of Real Life,” which you can’t win without crossing the lines. Then there’s the “Barbie on a Stick” series.

“Barbie on a Stick” is Barbie painted gold and crucified. My favorite piece in the series, “The Accessories Will Kill You,” has her crucifix symmetrically gilded with little shoes, jewelry and tiny handbags.

Q Teagan, why do you do what you do to Barbie?

T Barbie has to die for Mattel’s sins.

Q The sins of Mattel?

T Barbie has been marketed to death. She’s a deformed bimbo with a castrated boyfriend. Barbie has no direction. She changes jobs as often as she changes clothes, and she has been inflicted upon every little American girl since 1959. When are they going to make a doll that can stand on her own two feet?

Q Why crucify her?

T Crucifixion is a 6,000-year-old tradition for dealing with criminals and false prophets. To me, Barbie qualifies as both. As a recovering Catholic, I have much glittery and morose imagery to draw on. The result, the “Barbie on a Stick” series, is a cross between Renaissance artisanry and a Tupperware party. I love the falseness of covering her with metallic paints and plastic jewels – the image of a golden, bejeweled cross, underneath, nothing but styrene.

But not everyone views the Babe so negatively. Performance artist, Paula Magar, dressed in her size 14 version of Barbie’s “Friday Nite Date” outfit, presents an opposing viewpoint to McDonald’s outright miso-Barbie-ism. Paula’s character, “Bunny Crawford” whirled smiling onto the stage at the recent Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival and sang:

    There was one summer when the whole world changed/and I didn’t know it
    Not till Labor Day arrived and I started seventh grade/Yuck! I’ll never forget it.
    It was all about being cool and I wasn’t
    I was the only one still playing with my Barbie doll…

Q Paula, who is Bunny Crawford?

The Real Difference Between Men and Women

We’ve all heard, at least a little, about “gender difference” from pop-psychology. I mean, doesn’t this sound familiar? “Women are from Venus; Men, from Uranus.”