If you have installed Excel 2003/2007 and Adobe Professional 7, 8 or 9, you may get the following error when you start Excel 2003 or Excel 2007:
"Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon" 
Cause:
The cause of this error is PDFMaker.xla, which loads at startup.
Solution:
The easiest solution is to delete PDFMaker.xla from your computer. Since Adobe Professional 8 uses DLL-addins to add the toolbar in Excel, you can safely delete the PDFMaker.xla file on your computer.
PDFMaker.xla may be at one or more locations on your computers.
Typically, PDFMaker.xla is stored in your profile directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\PDFMaker.xla
In other scenarios, PDFMaker.xla is stored in your Program Files directory.
After you deleted the file PDFMaker.xla, the error "Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon" at startup of Excel shouldn’t appear. To be sure you delete all PDFMaker.xla files, you can search your C:\ drive for all PDFMaker.xla. Make sure you search in subfolders and hidden files and folders.
The error described above has been occured in combination with the following applications:
- Adobe Acrobat Professional 7
- Adobe Acrobat Professional 8
- Adobe Acrobat Professional 9
- Microsoft Office Excel 2003
- Microsoft Office Excel 2007
You need to get rid of the .xla & .dot extensions. Excel looks at the last 3 letters, not the nam as a whole.
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I have had this issue on several of the PC’s in our office and have resolved the problem following the advice above (thank you very much!). However, I have one PC that will not cooporate. I did the search for both types of files (*.xla and *.dot) and the return shows the files, BUT someone had already renamed the files (pdfmaker.xla to pdfmaker.old.xla and pdfmaker.dot to pdfmaker.old.dot).
Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this PC?
Thanks
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Thanks for the info. Your advice worked like a charm. Went the the C:\ Drive, searched all files and folders (including hidden files) and removed all instances of the pdfmaker.xla. Once removed, I opened up Excel 2007 and the error was gone. Appreciate the assistance.
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Thanks for the help. Deleted pdfmaker.xla and all is right with the world.
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Go to this link for solution…..u r done in less than 5 mins::
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307410
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The tip on searching hidden files was the kicker! I couldn’t understand why the fix wasn’t working. Thanks so much, Cinnamon!
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That fix worked for me beautifully, thank you so much! And now my create PDF function doesn’t crash Excel when I use it, which was causing me problems as well.
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Worked a treat, got rid of both annoying messages & excel opens much faster… Cheers
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Help – I followed your instructions and got rid of the “distMon” issue but now when I open a spreadsheet it appears blank until I click on a cell with data in it and then the whole sheet appears!
Also- when I close the file a blank Book1.xlt isopen behind it!
Please help!
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Help – I followed your instructions and got rid of the “distMon” issue but now when I open a spreadsgeet it appears blank until I click on a cell withdatainnnnnit and then the whole sheet appear! Alo- when I cloeit aablank Book1.xlt isopen behind it
Please help
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Just a note: When performing your search, be sure to check in the hidden folders/file, too. First search found nothing until I checked that box…
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I deleted the PDFMaker.xla and no longer have the error; howver, I no longer can use editing tools, in particular the highlight tool, Adobe Acrobat Pro now.
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I found the PDFMaker.xla and deleted it.
Now my excel works okay now.
Thanks for the info.
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Thanks for the tip. It cleared the problem up straight away. The file was in the program files directory which kind of makes sense.
Cheers
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It works well. Thanks for your help.
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Thank you for your tip
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Julie, you probably just deleted a shortcut. The actual file is in your Program Files folder
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Found the file here: c:\Documents and Settings\user\Recent
I deleted it but it did not solve my problem. I still get the error message when I open AND close Excel.
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Found the PDFmaker.xla file and deleted it. Worked beautifully! Thank you for the info.
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Very useful information, Thanks a lot
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thanks, it helped,and worked okay now..
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Great stuff.. thanks
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I used the windows search to locate and delete all the PDFMaker.xla files and it worked very well
Thanks!
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Thank you! renaming the file in the profile settings did not work but deleting it did! go figure!
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I find that removing most adobe products helps things go faster in all honesty.
~S
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Wonderful! Thank you! That was so annoying
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After all else failed, I did a repair installation on Adobe 9, then did the search on the *.xla, *.dot, and *.xla.lnk, found the files, deleted them, and everything seems to still work fine.
Hope it helps.
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thanks very much. finally someone was able to help me. neither Adobe nor Microsoft’s sites had a workable fix.
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No files names PDFMaker.xla, hidden or otherwise so nothing to delete.
Tried deleting XLStart, but after Excel ‘repaired’ itself, same error.
Office 2003 and Acrobat 8.
Any other suggestions?
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used windows search feature and found all instances of PDFMaker.xla – removed them all. Excel loads / closes very fast and without incident. MANY thanks!
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same problem after deleting pdfmaker.dat, but when we delete few times a message came serious errors with “do you want to disable the add-in, click yes and it solved the problem.
Thanks to all of you
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Simply removed the xla file and error no longer appeared, excel also seemed to load a lot faster.
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Thanks, It works. I uninstalled my NitroPDF professional and removed PDFMaker.xla in Program Files. Thanks a lot!!
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Thanks a million guys.
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Dear Christian,
I have been getting this error for a while but ignored assuming that one of the file’s got corrupted. Today, I googled for an answer and here you are. I followed YOUR INSTRUCTIONS and it DID WORK.
Thank you for the posting.
Srini Lokula
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Hi John,
thank you for your answer (on your own post :) ). Because of a holidy, I was unable to reply, but I’m glad you solved the problem!
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After deleting the XLStart folder in Program files/Microsoft Office/Office12 and doing a search for all PDFMaker files and deleting them, I ran Excel and it re-installed and then ran Adobe 9 and it re-installed and everything seems to be working fine now.
Hope this helps.
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Just installed Acrobat Standard v.8 upgrade over Acrobat Standard v 6 (on Vista) and received this error message opening Excel 2002 (SP3). Removing PDFMaker.xla from the profile directory seems to have eliminated the message.
Thanks for the info.
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I have deleted the PDFMaker.xla file twice and am still getting the error at Excel startup. I am running XP with Office 2007 and Adobe 9 Standard. Any help would be appreciated.
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I just did a search for files and folders PDFMaker.xla and got two results. I right clicked on them and deleted them and eerything seems to work fine now. Thank You for the advice.
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