XL97: Page Fault Copying Shared Formulas and Opening Workbook

• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

When you open a workbook in Microsoft Excel 97, you may receive the following error message:

   This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
   If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.

   EXCEL caused an invalid page fault in module EXCEL.EXE at
   0137:30104a84.

   EXCEL caused an invalid page fault in module EXCEL.EXE at
   0137:3011f337.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if all of the following conditions are true:

• In the workbook, you copy a range that contains shared formulas.

  -and-

• You select a range that contains shared values or shared formulas, click Paste Special on the Edit menu, select an operation (for example, Add, Subtract, Multiply, or Divide), and then click OK.

  -and-

• You save, close, and then attempt to reopen the workbook.

RESOLUTION

To prevent this problem from occurring, do not copy a range of shared formulas and use the Paste Special command to paste the copied formulas into a range that contains shared values or shared formulas.

Note that the problem does not occur if any of the following conditions are true:

• You copy the values and paste them onto the formulas. The problem occurs only when you paste shared formulas onto shared values or shared formulas.
• The values or formulas onto which you paste the formulas are not shared. If at least one of the values or formulas is different from the others, the problem does not occur.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

If this problem is already occurring, you may not be able to open the workbook. For additional information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q142117
   TITLE     : Excel: Summary of Methods to Recover Data from Corrupted
               Files

   ARTICLE-ID: Q147216
   TITLE     : XL: Linking to Data in a Damaged File (5.0 and Later)

   A1: =E1+F1   B1: 1   C1: 1
   A2: =E2+F2   B2: 1   C2: 2
   A3: =E3+F3   B3: 1   C3: 3
   A4: =E4+F4   B4: 1   C4: 4
   A5: =E5+F5   B5: 1   C5: 5
   A6: =E6+F6   B6: 1   C6: 6

Shared values work slightly differently. Because all of the values in column B are identical, they are shared values. Although there is a pattern to the values in column C, they are not shared values because they are different.