BusinessObjects Board

Error in communicating with Excel.

other Xcelsius - Crystal Dashboard Design
#1

Hello

There is an error occurring while i am accessing to Xcelsius.

An error in communicating with MS Excel, to prevent further data corruption Xcelsius must close.

Please give any solution

ketkichoudhary (BOB member since 2012-01-16)

Xcelsius error "Could not connect to microsoft excel...
#2

A) Start Windows TaskManager and shutdown all Excel and Xcelsius processes
B) Revert back to an older backup of your Xcelsius Dashboard file (*.xlf)

Andreas :de: (BOB member since 2002-06-20)

#3

Moreover,

Do not try to open Excel and Xcelsius at the same time.
It may corrupt…

If you get any error message like "Server busy"or any other follow as per the Andreas post.

Thanks,
A.M :slight_smile:

yourajai :india: (BOB member since 2011-03-09)

#4

Thanks, it was excel which is irritating me :).

ketkichoudhary (BOB member since 2012-01-16)

#5

Restarted pc completely, but I can’t open the XLF at all now. I’ve not even had excel open at all either.

That’s a day’s work lost. :reallymad:

Debbie

Debbie :uk: (BOB member since 2005-03-01)

#6

Any error message Debbie?

cdavies :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-28)

#7

hmm, i get this A LOT… never have excel open either. next time I open a dashboard (and this happens, which it will) I will try the above

spoons :uk: (BOB member since 2012-06-26)

#8

Hi,
I’ve come across this issue quite a few times. One thing I’ve recently found out is that Xcelsius can be opened with a zip program (such as winrar). Inside there is a folder with images, an xml document and a file called xldoc. The xldoc is the excel file so if you had a back of the excel you could replace the xldoc and then the xlf should open. I’ve had to do this once myself recently, and while it was fiddly I did recover my work.

infinitas :uk: (BOB member since 2013-07-19)

#9

I find its a good practice to have an incremental release number in my XLF file names. If I do any sort of change I increase the release number and create a new XLF. Yes its a bit of storage space but I’ve rarely lost more than a couple of hours work from a failure because of it.

I’ve also taken to saving my XLF’s to my local drive during development and backing up to my network drives at the end of the day. That way (in theory) I’m covered against application, hard drive and network failures.

Thanks

Ozzy

Ozzy_BOBJ :australia: (BOB member since 2013-03-20)

#10

Yesterday I discovered a few of my Xcelsius models (all similar) were no longer loading and coming up with:

In Xcelsius 2008 v5.5 build 12,5,0,1388 ‘An error occurred while communicating with Microsoft Excel. To prevent further data corruption, Xcelsius must close.’

In SAP Dashboard 6.0.5.0 Buld 14,0,5,882 ‘Could not connect to Microsoft Excel. To prevent corruption, the program must close.’

They had last been saved with an earlier version/SP/fixpack of Xcelsius though I can’t rememeber which. Also, Excel 2007 was active.

After searching for the reason I independantly came up with the same solution as infinitas.

  1. Make a copy of the model.
  2. Rename it with a zip extension.
  3. Open the zip and drag out the xldoc and document.xml files. This action copies them.
  4. Rename xldoc to xldoc.xls
  5. Open Excel first then load xldoc.xls. (If I tried to open it by double-clicking it errored again with ‘Could not connect to Microsoft Excel.’!). The files loaded up in protected view but I have no idea why.
  6. Save it with SaveAs and pick the Excel Workbook (*.xlsx) format. Close Excel. Reopen and load the .xlsx file.
  7. Save back to Excel 97-2003 Workbook (*.xls) format. You can create a new file or replace the original. My spreadsheet had tables so it asked me about compatibility. I disabled the checkbox though I don’t know if it relevant.
  8. Open Xcelsius or Dashboard. Immediately use Data Import to load in the newly ‘fixed’ spreadsheet.
  9. With the spreadsheet successfully imported save the blank model. Close Xcelsius
  10. Like before rename the new model from xlf to zip.
  11. Open the zip and delete the document.xml file.
  12. Drag in the original document.xml (from step 3) into the new zip.
  13. Close and rename it back to .xlf

And that’s it. Alternatively, for steps 11 and 12 you can instead delete the xldoc in the original zip and drag in the replacement from the blank model.

lozeon (BOB member since 2009-10-09)

#11

Wow. Have a :cookie: I’m impressed!

Did you get the actual model back? Or just the data sheet?

I’ve not had a problem for a while. I may be getting complacent.

Debbie

Debbie :uk: (BOB member since 2005-03-01)

#12

Yep. In full working order. The Xcelsius components and their links to the spreadsheet cells were not affected so once Excel and the sheets were loaded they connected seamlessly to the data.

Despite this issue which was to do with outdated saved models I think you’re right - at the moment with Windows 7/Excel 2010/Dashboard present it’s quite stable.

lozeon (BOB member since 2009-10-09)

#13

Yep. I was getting complacent. All this time and xcelisus has behaved itself - until today when it’s had a hissy fit. :cuss:

Managed to recover yesterday’s file from a backup, but I’d really like to recover today’s work from the corrupted file if I can.

So tried to follow lozeon’s instructions and fell over at the first hurdle. Just how do you rename file now in windows 7? I can right-click, rename and add a .zip, but the file is still an xlf, albeit with “.zip” in the filename! How do I change the file type?

I knew it was all too good to be true.

Debbie

ETA: Wait one. Managed to just use Winzip to open the XLF without renaming. Onto next step…

ETA2: Nope. Broken links all over the place. It’d take longer to fix than it would to recreate. :flush:

Debbie :uk: (BOB member since 2005-03-01)

#14

Woohoo! I just used this trick to repair a corrupted XLF file. Worked a treat!

But, wow has WinZip gotten bogged down with adware. I feel like it’s corrupting my machine.

Lugh (BOB member since 2009-07-16)