Very weird, 2 Excel's, we're in just 1

[David Thielen]

I've never seen this before. One of our testers has Excel 2007 (SP-2)
open, our AddIn is running fine.

He clicks on an XLSX file and it opens a second copy of Excel that
does not have our AddIn.

First, I thought you can't have 2 seperate main Excel windows. But he
does.

Second, any idea why we don't show up in the second one?

thanks - dave

david@[email protected]
Windward Reports -- http://www.WindwardReports.com
me -- http://dave.thielen.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm

 

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

Hi David,

First, I thought you can't have 2 seperate main Excel windows.
But he does.

Well actually you can. Just type "excel" in the run dialog and hit enter,
do it two times you get two Excel.exe processes.

By default, double clicking a spread sheet in explorer will send the open
command to the first Excel process. I don't know for sure why it now opens
a second instance, also not sure if that's constantly or just when the
first Excel process is somehow busy or unresponsiveness. If it was not the
case, I'd start checking the .XLSX shell settings in the registry as a
beginning.

Second, any idea why we don't show up in the second one?

What's your add-in's status in the COM Add-ins dialog box? Is it shown
loaded or not? Can it be constantly reproduced?

Thanks,
Jie Wang

Microsoft Online Community Support

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[David Thielen]

Hi David,


Well actually you can. Just type "excel" in the run dialog and hit enter,
do it two times you get two Excel.exe processes.

By default, double clicking a spread sheet in explorer will send the open
command to the first Excel process. I don't know for sure why it now opens
a second instance, also not sure if that's constantly or just when the
first Excel process is somehow busy or unresponsiveness. If it was not the
case, I'd start checking the .XLSX shell settings in the registry as a
beginning.


What's your add-in's status in the COM Add-ins dialog box? Is it shown
loaded or not? Can it be constantly reproduced?

It is shown as loaded in the COM list. We are running on Excel 2007.
This is happening on just 1 test system (running Vista).

thanks - dave

david@[email protected]
Windward Reports -- http://www.WindwardReports.com
me -- http://dave.thielen.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm

 

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

It is shown as loaded in the COM list.

If you have Visual Studio and your add-in source code/symbols on that box,
I'd recommend attach the debugger to the second Excel process and see
what's happening under the hood. Before attaching to Excel, you may also
want to unload the add-in from the COM Add-ins dialog first. Then attach
the debugger, set a breakpoint, and load the add-in from the COM Add-ins
dialog.

If I remember correctly, your add-in is managed and is loaded by a C++
shim. So the shim might be the start point of debugging.

Regards,
Jie Wang

Microsoft Online Community Support

Delighting our customers is our #1 priority. We welcome your comments and
suggestions about how we can improve the support we provide to you. Please
feel free to let my manager know what you think of the level of service
provided. You can send feedback directly to my manager at:
(e-mail address removed).

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[David Thielen]

If you have Visual Studio and your add-in source code/symbols on that box,
I'd recommend attach the debugger to the second Excel process and see
what's happening under the hood. Before attaching to Excel, you may also
want to unload the add-in from the COM Add-ins dialog first. Then attach
the debugger, set a breakpoint, and load the add-in from the COM Add-ins
dialog.

If I remember correctly, your add-in is managed and is loaded by a C++
shim. So the shim might be the start point of debugging.

Ok, even more weird. It listed our AddIn as a running AddIn in Excel.
So we added MessageBoxes to see what iExtensibility methods were being
called.

It then worked.

So we took the MessageBoxes back out - and it still works.

I don't know what the #@$% was going on but now it all works ok.
Still, this worries me because it might be some weird error that will
occur just on our customers systems.

Anyways, I wanted to post that this is now working, but we never
faound the cause, in case someone else gets this and trips across this
thread in google.

david@[email protected]
Windward Reports -- http://www.WindwardReports.com
me -- http://dave.thielen.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm

 

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

I'm also worrying about that. Apparently the MessageBox is not the real fix.

Not sure if you have any logging facilities in your code, but if not, I'd
recommend you add a logging mechanism which can be turned on/off in config
file; and make it log the info/warnings/errors so next time something
happens it will be easier to diagnose the problem.

And thank you very much for the update!

Also I hope someone else gets this in case can trip across this thread in
Bing. ;-)

Regards,
Jie Wang

Microsoft Online Community Support

Delighting our customers is our #1 priority. We welcome your comments and
suggestions about how we can improve the support we provide to you. Please
feel free to let my manager know what you think of the level of service
provided. You can send feedback directly to my manager at:
(e-mail address removed).

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[David Thielen]

I'm also worrying about that. Apparently the MessageBox is not the real fix.

Not sure if you have any logging facilities in your code, but if not, I'd
recommend you add a logging mechanism which can be turned on/off in config
file; and make it log the info/warnings/errors so next time something
happens it will be easier to diagnose the problem.

Good idea - I'll add this.

And thank you very much for the update!

Also I hope someone else gets this in case can trip across this thread in
Bing. ;-)

Would Google/Bing be Boogle or Ging?

david@[email protected]
Windward Reports -- http://www.WindwardReports.com
me -- http://dave.thielen.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm