Win 7 "broke" my Excel Add in

[kriemer]

It appears that Microsoft in their less than infinite wisdom have changed the default Excel 2003 add-in file location. I have also found that my existing spreadsheets that use a stock retrieval add-in (and perhaps others) fail; as the location of that add-in is coded into the spreadsheet.

The result of all this is that I need to rebuild many, many, etc., spreadsheets as a consequence of my move to Win 7. This also means that the spreadsheets are not transferable between machines running the 2 different operating systems.

Is there any fix to this issue?

Apologies if this is more of an Excel issue than a Win 7 issue.

Regards

 

[Barman58]

I am surprised that this is happening as win7 uses virtualisation technology to specifically deal with this issue.

Can you let me know what the original location is and if possible the new location and I will see if it is a re-direction issue or maybe a protection issue. win7 by default provides far better protection to system areas, and if the add-in is pointing to a protected area this will need to be addressed

 

[kriemer]

Win XP default Excel add in location:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERXXX\Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns

Win 7 default Excel add in location:
C:\Users\USERXXX\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\AddIns

I sure hope there's a solution to this.

Thanks in advance

k

 

[Barman58]

this is confusing Win7 includes a junction point for this very purpose pointing all requests for C:\Documents and Settings\USERXXX\Application Data.... to C:\Users\USERXXX\AppData\Roaming.... so this should work without modification.

What error message do you receive, or does the application just fail?

 

[kriemer]

The application (spreadsheet) just fails.

k

 

[Barman58]

Assuming that the Add-on is located in the correct place then I can only assume that this is an issue with Windows 7

I have come across this partly related page from Microsoft, relating to %appdata%, the location we are dealing with here, which suggests that similar errors may be corrected by changing the Path environmental variable in XP.

Manually adding the full location to the "path" EV may get the spreadsheets to work without modification


Environment variable may not expand %APPDATA% to the Application folder

 

[kriemer]

I am not sure what you mean by "...which suggests that similar errors may be corrected by changing the Path environmental variable in XP".

Where does XP come into the equation?

Thanks

k

 

[Barman58]

Ok I don't have office 2003, available to test here (which I am assuming you are running on Win7 as well as XP machines).

I have tested the %appdata% variable in win7 and using XPmode and they point to the correct locations relevant to the OS .

If you change the link address in excel to read "%appdata%\microsoft\AddIns" (plus the actual add-in detail if needed), the spreadsheet should be able to find the actual add in.

 

[Barman58]

Additional testing produces the following in my system

Running a command prompt

c:\>cd C:\Documents and Settings\nigel\Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns

C:\Documents and Settings\nigel\Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns>dir
 Volume in drive C is W7 Pro x64
 Volume Serial Number is 04EE-D94A

 Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\nigel\Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns

22/08/2009  12:41    <DIR>          .
22/08/2009  12:41    <DIR>          ..
13/12/2009  18:52                 0 Test document in appdata roaming.TXT
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  40,010,432,512 bytes free

C:\Documents and Settings\nigel\Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns>

Which illustrates that the original path is valid in win7 and points to the new location as the test document shown is is the new addins folder

 

[kriemer]

Barman 58

You are right the WinXP path is valid (I'm not able to run in XP mode & it is still there). When I try pointing to the add in in this directory Excel returns to the Win 7 default. Sigh...

I guess at some point I will see the reason/advantage of the junction point/node structure Win 7 works under.

Thanks 10^6

k

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Kriemer:

For what it's worth, I am using the stock retrieval add-in on Windows 7 with no issues.

My C users myusername appdata roaming microsoft addin folder is empty.

I am using Excel 2007.

I have used the stock retrieval add-in successfully in these combinations:

Vista, Excel 2003
Vista, Excel 2007
Win 7, Excel 2007

I didn't have to make any modifications at all when I moved to Win 7---just a fresh install of Excel 2007. My stocks spreadsheet automatically worked as well under Win 7 as it did under Vista--including data connections and macros.

I don't remember all the details of the Excel install, but if memory serves you have to deliberately choose to install the Excel ToolPak?

 

[kriemer]

ignatzatsonic

Perhaps the difference is that you are using Excel 2007, perhaps it is in the stock data add-in you are using.

To be clear my add-in does work, but I do have to reset existing spreadsheets so that they are built under the new addressing conditions. This does leave me with a works on Win 7 or WinXP situation.

Thanks

k

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Here is the one I am using. It's a MS product, but they may have other versions?

 

[kriemer]

I am using a similar add-in from QuotesPlus.

QuotesPlus is a commercial/Annual Fee service that provides more data fields than the MS equivalent.

Regards

k