Killing a Phantom Menu in Excel

February 22, 2006 5:01 AM

Elite Tech Support Needed. Where does what's left of this plugin live? This one is elusive....

First of all, system specs. Acer Laptop, WinXP SP2 fully up-to-date. Office 2003 Professional, also fully up to date.

Here's the problem: I have a "Documents To Go" [exactly like that] menu between "_Window" and "_Help" in Excel. [Where _X indicated the underlined Alt command for that menu.] It has the following sub-menu items "_Add to Documents To Go User" and "_Open Documents to Go". Clicking on the first is not possible, clicking on the second gives the standard Excel "file could not be found" error with various bullets suggesting you check the path, etc.

I do not now, nor have I ever had Documents To Go installed on THIS computer. I have, however, migrated my settings from a previous computer than did have DTG on it. As well as my entire My Documents Folder including office templates.

I would like to remove this menu item, which annoys me, although to be honest it causes no actual problems.

Here is what I have tried already:
-Excel templates for Sheet.xlt or Book.xlt (wiped)

-Normal.dot template (wiped, but I think it's irrelevant anyway)

-Registry: Examined all of the various Addins for any sign of DTG. None found.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins]

-Searched the entire registry for DVZ or Dataviz or any of the other related names. Found one reference in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID key.
Backed it up and removed it, no noticeable effect.

-Cleared out the \XLSTART directory in
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\XLSTART,
ditto \STARTUP ditto \ADDINS.

-For a different reason I uninstalled and reinstalled Excel, it's still there.

-Also tried the Automatic repair tool in Excel. Zero effect.

I'm considering installing the software and then just removing it again, but I'm concerned that could cause more problems. I'm confident of my registry editing skills, willing to open up files with a hex editor if that's what's required.

posted by tiamat to computers & internet (6 comments total)

You could install Documents To Go and then uninstall it. It might be more expedient, assuming you generally trust it to clean up after itself.
posted by bcwinters at 6:46 AM on February 22, 2006

Does it show up in your Palm desktop software? If so, try setting it to be deleted from your Palm, and then syncing.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:53 AM on February 22, 2006

To clarify, not only do I not have DTG on this system, I also do not have palm desktop on this system. I swtiched to an iPaq before getting the laptop. So Palm Desktop has also never been installed on this computer.
posted by tiamat at 7:28 AM on February 22, 2006

Right click any where on the menu and pick 'customize' at the bottom of the context menu that pops up.

You are now in menu editing mode.

You should then be able to click-and-drag on the menu entry you want to get rid of. Drag it to some location (like into the document area) and the cursor should show a 'X' next to it. Release the mouse and the menu entry should disappear.

You can then safely close the 'Customize' window that popped up, too.
posted by killThisKid at 8:25 AM on February 22, 2006

killThisKid, sweet lord I thought you could only do that with the iconic menus below. Your answer worked like a charm, thanks!
posted by tiamat at 10:19 AM on February 22, 2006

You're welcome!
posted by killThisKid at 6:24 AM on February 23, 2006