POSSIBLE ISSUE
If, when opening the Sheet, Excel FAILS with the "Microsoft Office Excel has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." error, try these workarounds:
WORK AROUND: Excel may be inconsistent opening the Sheet. These simple methods might do the trick:
Open and Repair: Instead of double-clicking on the .xls file to open it, try this. Start Excel 2003 (only the application). In the menu, select File->Open. Browse to the Character sheet, and select it - Now on the OPEN button on the lower right, there is a small arrow: Click on it and choose Open & Repair.
Open Only: Same as above, but simply load the sheet once Excel is already started.
Open Icon: Try opening the Sheet with the Open Icon
Drag & Drop: Start Excel. Drag and Drop the Sheet on the blue Excel title.
Safe Mode: You can try starting Excel 2003 in Safe mode and then load the Character sheet. To do so, you do START->RUN and then in the run box, type "Excel /s" - the "/s" switch option will tell excel 2003 to start in Safe mode. Then load the character sheet.
Adobe Interference: I've discovered on Microsoft's site, that Adobe may interfere with Excel [click here for Excel 2002, and here for Excel 2003] Check to see if you have anything if your "XLStart" folder on your computer (search for it on your PC). That folder contains things that get loaded by Excel upon startup. You can try to temporarily remove the files there (Specifically the "PDFMaker.xla" file), Reboot your PC, and see if you can open the Sheet using any of the above methods.
Norton Anti-Virus: Can cause some type of interference when loading the Sheet in Excel 2002. According to Microsoft's site [click here to view], this is caused by a corrupted file [Dec2cab.dll] in Norton Anti-Virus.
Ignore Other Applications: Uncheck the Tools->Options->General->Ignore other applications
Re-Register Excel: Start button->Run and type "excel /unregserver". Then Start button->Run and type "excel /regserver".
XLB Files: What the heck is an XLB file? It's where all your toolbar customization is stored. Sometimes, it becomes corrupt, and hoses up your Excel so that you can't use it. So, with Excel closed, you do a search for *.xlb files and you rename or delete them. Then re-launch Excel.
"C:\test\excel sheet" folder: Create a "C:\test\excel sheet" folder and copy the Sheet there. Now try to open with any of the methods listed above
FACTS
Here is a list
of FACTS about the Character Sheet:
This problem dates back BEFORE any Macros were used
No user defined functions have been created
No add-ins are used
Only simple functions are used - no fancy stuff
Excel 2000 has shown no problems opening this sheet
The maximum number of Formats had been reached in version 6.36 - some worksheets have been reformatted to lower the count of formats to avoid this limitation.
I've discovered that the "Excel 2003 Viewer" available HERE from Microsoft can open the Sheet without any problems...