A couple weeks ago, I was working on a file in Excel. Today I opened it again and the column widths were different. I had been working hard to make things look nice, it totally screwed up the whole thing. I spent a couple hours fixing it, but then went to some other files and discovered that they had been resized, too. Everything I opened had been changed--page sizes and column widths, mostly. Most of them aren't a huge deal, but now I am worried that it will happen again, and it's a royal pain--it's a lot of complicated, fussy stuff to fix! I had to copy and paste formatting throughout the entire huge document.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what happened, but it occurred to me that the color scheme in Word had mysteriously changed to black rather than blue a week or so ago, and when I opened Excel, it was black as well. I hadn't changed that, but hadn't taken time to wonder about it. Now I am really wondering. Somehow, something weird is going on with Office! Can anyone shed light on this?

I did search online a bit, and found a note somewhere that saving a file as macro-enabled rather than worksheet could affect formatting, so I did try saving the file both ways just in case. But I just do not get it! I thought saving meant SAVING!

Sorry you are having issues with Office but have to ask some questions...

* What version of Office are you running?
* Is there an alert at the top of an Excel sheet that says it is running in comparability mode?
* If running Office 2007 or later are you sure that you did not save the file to be compatible with earlier versions? This could easily cause layout issues.

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Home and Student 2016
No
Not sure about this.

The first file was macro-enabled, and probably had been brought from an earlier version, but it doesn't say anything about compatibility mode.

What is the file extension on the file in question, .XLS or .XLSX?

Personally I'd load the file and make sure that all was good editing as needed to make it right. I would then save the file under a different name to see if the issue returns.

The macros from the possibly earlier version could be an issue. You would possibly need to "trust" the macros. I suggest only doing this if you wrote the macros yourself. Macros in Office is one of the larger vulnerabilities.

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They were .xlsm. I did write the macros myself, but don't really need them any more, so I did save the one I fixed as .xlsx. It's just weird that I had worked on them in December with no issues, but suddenly ALL of them went to pieces. I'm wondering if I got an update that might have messed it up and didn't realize it. Can't imagine what else would make everything change suddenly.

It is possible that an update is involved. It is also possible that going from a .xlsm to a .xlsx could be part of the issue if the original file is directly calling for a macro that is no longer there in the .XLSX file.

I'll be honest in that I'm mostly guessing here...

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No, the issue happened before I changed the file extension. I only did that afterward, hoping that it would keep it from happening again! The more I thought about it, the weirder this got!

It most certainly is a weird one based on your description.
The Office color scheme of Blue to Black is the most unusual thing you encountered, in my opinion and I can't even speculate why that would happen.
As for the column/page resizing for multiple files, there's only one thing that I can think of that might explain that. Page Setup in Excel is driven by the default printer, though I've never seen a dramatic change happen if you then switch to a different printer. I have seen oddities if you don't have a default printer defined, but that was in much older versions of the Office programs, not recently.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Okay, this is exactly what I was thinking about in bed last night. During the time between Christmas and New Years, I made birthday calendars for my family. I do this every year, and have the process pretty much mastered, but this year I bought this new laptop, and I had never printed with my Canon from it. I have an HP for everyday jobs, but like to print the calendar photos with the Canon. So when I tried to print them from this machine, it wouldn't find that printer. I had to end up downloading drivers and installing it manually, and even then, the print setup looked different than it had been before. Had a major battle with the printer--maddeningly weird things like it refused to print black--and spent a couple days searching for answers online and figuring it out. I finally did get it to work, praise God!

Sometime during that mess was when I realized that the Office color scheme had changed, but I was so distracted and worried by all the printer weirdness, I didn't pay a lot of attention to that. So now I'm wondering if maybe all that messing with printer settings is what did it. That could sort of make sense for the page sizes, but how could it have messed up column widths??? And why change the color scheme? So strange!!!

On the other hand, it is rather a comfort to have a possible explanation, because I have been feeling pretty insecure about the security of my files. At least if this was the problem, it won't be likely to happen again. Just never even thought of printer installation being a dangerous thing!

It does suggest that the printer installation and setup woes that you dealt with may have been the reason for the Excel weirdness. Like you, I find it especially odd that this would have an effect on column widths, but I'll refer you to my signature quote (the source for which I don't have a clue!) -- "Life's always an adventure with computers!"
I am quite certain that you shouldn't be concerned that this was at all a security issue with the files or Office, despite the oddity of what you dealt with.
And, well done on resolving the printer issue -- that sounds like another maddening battle!
-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

It certainly was! Thanks so much for talking me through this. I feel better!