XL98: Inserted Background Does Not Appear in Worksheet (185236)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition
This article was previously published under Q185236

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition, the following problems may occur:
  • If you insert a background into a worksheet by pointing to Sheet on the Format menu, clicking Background, selecting a picture, and clicking Insert, the background image does not appear. When this happens, no error messages appear.
  • When you point to Sheet on the Format menu, the Delete Background menu command appears even though the worksheet does not appear to have a background.

CAUSE

These problems may occur when the following conditions are true:
  • The picture file you have selected for the background is very large. -and-

  • You have not increased the amount of memory that is available to Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition.

WORKAROUND

To work around these problems, increase the amount of memory that is available to Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition. To do this, follow these steps:
  1. Quit Microsoft Excel 98.
  2. Using the Finder, go to the Microsoft Office 98 folder on the hard disk on your computer.
  3. Click the Microsoft Excel program icon. On the File menu, click Get Info.
  4. Increase the value in the Preferred Size box.

    NOTE: If you increase the value too much, you may run out of memory or you may be unable to run other programs simultaneously.
  5. When you are finished, click Close Window on the File menu.
  6. Restart Microsoft Excel 98.
After you restart Excel, you can correctly insert the picture file as a background.

If you cannot increase the amount of memory available to Microsoft Excel 98, select a smaller picture file to use as a background.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Microsoft Excel listed above.

MORE INFORMATION

In Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition, you can insert a picture file into the background of a worksheet by following these steps:
  1. On the Format menu, point to Sheet, and click Background.
  2. In the dialog box, select the picture file that you want to use. Then, click Insert.
The picture appears in the background of the worksheet, "behind" the cells.

To remove the background, point to Sheet on the Format menu, and then click Delete Background.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:9/11/2002
Keywords:kbbug KB185236
©2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.