December 27, 2005

CG: Mac Mystery Excel Bell? I'm temping at a design shop that uses Macs (OS 9 on this one) and I cannot for the life of me figure out where a random bell noise is coming from.

I wanted to listen to some net radio so I installed Audion and plugged in the 'phones. I'm working with IE and MS Excel. Periodically (and in random time increments) I get a random bell chime. I turned of Excel's sound feedback option, and still it continues. It's driving me nuts. Note that the sound only seems to occur inside Excel (no mystery chime while typing this). Any ideas before I go all smashy smashy?

posted by waraw 18 years ago
  • Oh, I forgot to note that there seems to be no connection with what I'm actually doing and the bell. It comes when typing, when not typing, etc.
  • Sits back, waits for the inevitable "Buy a PC" troll
  • PC and Mac owner here, no troll. In Windows, there is a control panel where sounds are associated. I'm more adept at PC than Mac, but I have to believe that there is a similar control panel in OS9 (on the apple menu--I use use OSX now, so I'm sorry I can't be more specific). Anyway, no matter the program, there is a sound-to-event association and you should be able to turn it off (or at least find out what it is for).
  • No joy. The sound control panel from the apple menu doesn't even list the alert I'm hearing.
  • If you listen really closely, you'll hear that it's the voice of fairies, telling you to kill. Oh, and get a PC. kidding...
  • Mac OS 9? Yikes. /Backs away Slowly Um, Get a Mac with OS X. and not a bit too soon.
  • Lara: I'm quite at terms with the fairy voices actually. I miss them when they're away.
  • There were about 80 Viruses fro Mac OS 9. Some were not even that malicious. This sounds like one of them. Look at your running extensions, or just reload the SOB. If you do make sure you check the "Clean Install" option.
  • er, FOR*
  • If waraw is temping, I would recommend messing around with the system too much. Nice way to get kicked out the door early! But other than that, I got nothing.
  • I'm vaguely remembering a combination of "autosave every 'X' " and "beep on save" that might be responsible, but I haven't fired up OS 9 on my main desktop since the Beta of X came out.
  • First, there were only about 60 virii for the mac. Two, try the time/date control panel for the chime. Last, check your extensions to see if there is anything non apple/strange.
  • What MCroft said and if it's the bell I'm thinking of, it's called "Glass" in your built-in sound library (sounds like a knife going "ting" against a glass). Maybe poke around and see if that sound is chosen for something? I know there's some sort of panel where you can chose your sounds in OS9 (and will tell you the name of the sound, because I had mine set on "Submarine" for years), I just can't remember where it is. Glad I could be of absolutely no help to you, Waraw. Good luck!
  • My half-assed solution to your problem is to go into chooser/controller whatever the hell that little control panel menu was called and set the sound alert to mute. It's been a few years, but it seems like it's either under "sound" or "alert." This means it will never beep at you for anything ever again, but is that such a bad thing?
  • Control Panels --> Sound --> Alerts. Set alert volume to zero.
  • wow... mac OS 9 sucked so much.
  • Do you happen to have an email client also open? It may give you an audible sound when a new email arrives (which would account for the randomness of its occurances). Otherwise, check the Preferences of any running applications (usually at the bottom of the Edit menu in OS9, if memory serves). Look for sound or alert related preference settings in each open application.
  • First, there were only about 60 virii for the mac. Film geek before writing this: Well, Actually, *pushes glasses up his nose* Why don't you spilt more hairs. GLAVIN!
  • Oooh, I didn't realize I could just turn off the sound for alerts only. Thank you!