Office 2007 - how to make Excell 2007 look like OWC

[Vimas]

Hello,

Our company has been using OWC components as front end to query SQL Server
Analysis Services cubes. As there is no OWC in New 2007 office release I was
wondering if it is possible to use full Excell that is customized to look
like Pivot Table. We would build web page where excel spreadsheed would be
embeded into page and default menus would be removed and just our custom
menu would be available.

Could you please confirm if this is possible to do? Any suggestions on how
to start, what to read?

I know that Microsoft wants users to use Excel services instead of owc, but
we must (!) have ability to change dimensions, measures in the report and
excel services is very very limited.

Thanks for your help

 

[Harlan Grove]

Vimas wrote...

Our company has been using OWC components as front end to query SQL Server
Analysis Services cubes. As there is no OWC in New 2007 office release I was
wondering if it is possible to use full Excell that is customized to look
like Pivot Table. We would build web page where excel spreadsheed would be
embeded into page and default menus would be removed and just our custom
menu would be available.

....

There's no way to replace the Excel 2007 ribbon with a custom menu.
You'd have to customize the ribbon, and that means generating your own
XML to do so.

I know that Microsoft wants users to use Excel services instead of owc, but
we must (!) have ability to change dimensions, measures in the report and
excel services is very very limited.

Where does it say you must upgrade to Excel 2007?

Also, OWC may require Office licenses on client machines running it,
but as I understand it, OWC doesn't use Excel. It's a separate set of
COM controls. Microsoft might not object to Excel 2007 users using OWC
from Office 2003 or prior. You might want to check that first before
undertaking reprogramming your OWC applications.

 

[Vimas]

Harlan,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunatelly OWC 2003 does not work well with
Analysis Services 2005. They do not support many many important features.
Example: In Analysis services each dimension might have many attributes, but
in OWC all attributes are showed as separate dimensions.
Microsoft shipped Business Intelligence studio with OWC11 that has updated
version of dimension viewer. That version shows dimension info properly, but
so far they refused to support this outside of business intelligence studio.
There is no way to extract that change....
We do not mind paying licence - that is not an issue. We need a front end
that looks more like our tool and not like we are selling excel. That is why
I have this customization question.

Thanks