ActiveX in LV 6i

[RICHARD EVJE PETTERSEN]

I have a problem with activex in LabView 6i.
When I open "Write Table to XL.vi" or one of the other examples in LabView,
I recieve an error in the error indicator:
"Old format or invalid type library.
in Open Excel and Make Visible.vi->Write Table to XL.vi"

Is this a bug?

[jimbo]

What version of XL do you have? The example may work with XL 2000 or 97 but
not both. There are more examples at ni.com
"RICHARD PETTERSEN" wrote:
>I have a problem with activex in LabView 6i.>When I open "Write Table to
XL.vi" or one of the other examples in LabView,>I recieve an error in the
error indicator:>"Old format or invalid type library.> in Open Excel and
Make Visible.vi->Write Table to XL.vi">>Is this a bug?>>

[Jared 323]

Rich,

below is the same bug posted on this newsgroup less than a month ago. Following
is the text of that post.


"Subject: Bug Appeal: LV6 activeX with Excel; Error -2147319784
Date: 11/20/2000
Author: Martin Plassen


At Thu, 16 Nov 2000 14:55:00
"Dominic Lavoie" wrote:
Old format or invalid type library.



Dominic and others
This is an old bug in LabVIEW that I have been fighting
with for several years. The problem (as I have seen it) is that
LabVIEW for some reason on some PC's suddenly becomes unable to read from
the (NT-) registry that Excel is installed as an
available ActiveX component on the machine. In my case the
Excel8.olb file.

Under earlier verion of LabVIEW no error messages
was generated, but you could see the problem when entering
the list over ActiveX classes, Type library. Suddenly the Excel
would be gone from this list, and it will not come back no matter how you
try to install, reinstall or reconfigure the Excel (or Office) system. (And
the Regsvr32 program does not handle OLB files.)
The only way I have heard to fix it, is to reformat the
harddisk and install the OS and everything fresh. But you might
see the problem coming back again.
There might be a possibility that this bug is not NI's, but one
in the OS. When I use other programs to View/Edit the registry,
these programs have no problems of detecting the Excel library.
So I believe it is a LabVIEW bug !

When working with Excel and ActiveX with this problem
meant that you had to manually browse to the OLB file each time you would
want to work with it, or you would sometimes get messed up the wires and
VI's working against the Excel library.

Now, under LabVIEW 6i, this situation creates the error message
-2147319784, and the problem suddenly seems much bigger.
I have reported this bug two month ago to NI, together with some other people
that has seen the same problem. So far NI has not
been able to locate the problem in detail or done anything with it, as far
as I have been informed.

This has been a very frustrating experience for me, because there are many
other features under 6i that I would like to use right away. But since I
am working a lot with Excel as a data format from LabVIEW, I cannot proceed
with 6i before they have broken this bug.

So now I would like the LabVIEW community to help me push NI
a little in their effort to debug this one.
All questions of course assuming that you have installed Excel
on your PC.

Could as many as possible out there check out if,
when testing the ActiveX/Excel examples;

A) under 6i; do you get the Error -2147319784 ? (YES or NO)
B) under 5.1.1 or earlier; can you run the example Write Table to XL.vi ?
(YES or NO)
C) if B=NO, can you locate the Excel library in the ActiveX class list ?
(YES or NO)
D) Where in the world are you located (country) ?
(Some has speculated that this bug might be connected to a problem with
different OS versions in different parts of the world.)
E) What version of Excel are you using ?
F) What OS are you running ?


If you can't do both A and B/C, send me the one you can.
Please report your results directly to me.
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS LIST. I will send a
summary after a couple of weeks, to let you know
the results. And also if NI seems to make any progress here.


best regards
Martin Plassen"




"RICHARD PETTERSEN" wrote:
>I have a problem with activex in LabView 6i.>When I open "Write Table to
XL.vi" or one of the other examples in LabView,>I recieve an error in the
error indicator:>"Old format or invalid type library.> in Open Excel and
Make Visible.vi->Write Table to XL.vi">>Is this a bug?>>

[Alex]

[posted and mailed]

richard.pettersen@c2i.net (RICHARD PETTERSEN) wrote in
:

>I have a problem with activex in LabView 6i.
>When I open "Write Table to XL.vi" or one of the other examples in
>LabView, I recieve an error in the error indicator:
>"Old format or invalid type library.
> in Open Excel and Make Visible.vi->Write Table to XL.vi"
>
>Is this a bug?

Not really - what happens is that there is a mismatch between the AX
controls in the code and the AX controls on your machine. For example if
the controls are for Office 2000 and you only have Office 97 then there can
be issues where the properties and methods between the two Office versions
are in conflict. To correct the problem you need to open the code and
reselect the cor
rect control and (perhaps) methods and properties.

A limitation of the non-G approach I guess 😉

cheers, Alex.


--

Alexander C. Le Dain, PhD
ICON Technologies Pty Ltd
http://www.icon-tech.com.au

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