XL97: Undoing "Merge and Center" Causes Page Fault or Hang

• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Excel 97, if you attempt to undo the result of clicking Merge And Center on the Formatting toolbar, you may receive error messages similar to the following.

Microsoft Windows 95

   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
   0137:300ed4af.

Microsoft Windows NT

   Dr. Watson for Windows NT
   An application error has occurred and an application error log is
   being generated.

   Excel.exe

   Exception: access violation (0xc0000005), Address 0x300ed4af.

CAUSE

This problem may occur when you do the following:

• You click Freeze panes on the Window menu to create a horizontal frozen pane on the worksheet.

      -and-
  

• You select multiple cells below the horizontal frozen pane and apply the double bottom border format.

      -and-
  

• You select the cells with the double bottom border and click Merge and Center on the Formatting toolbar.

      -and-
  

• You click Undo Merge and Center on the Edit menu to undo the action.

RESOLUTION

To correct this problem, install Microsoft Excel 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1).

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Excel 97. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Excel SR-1.

For additional information about SR-1, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q172475
   TITLE     : OFF97: How to Obtain and Install MS Office 97 SR-1