Word/Excel Interface

[Tracy]

I've done a few programs in Excel that interfaced with
Word. I've done them in 2000 and XP.
In 2000, they barely work. They work fine in XP. Problem -
not everyone has XP.
I'm wondering if anyone has run into this version problem?
In 2000, there are more errors, it's slower. Btw, this is
for mail merges called from Excel, using bookmarks to
insert info from the workbook into the document.

So, anyone else seen this? Any ideas?
thanks!

 

[Jezebel]

My experience has been exactly the opposite. XP seems to have instabilities
relating to inter-process communication (trawl this and the straight VB
forums for any number of discussions). My Word/Excel and VB/Excel apps run
fine under 2000 -- stable, and fast; but not under XP. Mystery, eh?

 

[Tracy]

Thanks for the post Jezebel. That is unusual. Mine have
run on several different systems, and tho different error
messages may appear (I traced one to a printer driver),
the speed issues have a definitely been on the 2ks. oh,
and it was definitely Word causing the problem, not Excel.

What's your methodology when you have information in Excel
that needs to be in a Word document? Right now, we use a
mixture of links (that get cut after updating the
document) and bookmarks.

Late or Early binding?

 

[Jezebel]

My methods for working with Word and Excel vary depending on where we're
starting from (Word/Excel VBA or VB proper); but in general:

1. Use DocumentProperties for managing single values, if autoupdating is not
needed. *Much* easier to work with than bookmarks, and you don't have to
mess around with the body of the document itself, other than to update
fields.

2. Unless the code is VBA in Excel, never iterate worksheet cells. Much
easier and more reliable to read the spreadsheet data into a variant array,
and iterate that. (Spreadsheets are written the same way.

3. Use linked objects embedded in a Word document only as a last resort.
Automatic updating is great in theory, but in practice is usually
unnecessary and is subject to failure at so many different points.