LabVIEW 2014, report generation toolkit, excel 2016 and office 365 compatibility

[PaulG.]

Before I try to convince our IT folks to upgrade our Office software I need to know I'm not going to bite myself in the process. Will LV2014 work with latest versions of office products?

[Sam_Sharp · Accepted solution]

There's an NI article here that describes which versions of Office are supported by which versions of LabVIEW: https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/compatibility/17/report-generation-toolkit-and-microsoft...

[Sam_Sharp]

(Oh, and apparently Office 365 includes Word & Excel 2013?)

[beavercreek]

Hi, sorry for resurrecting the dead, but this really seams like the thread it should be in.

I have (Microsoft Windows 7SP1 [Version 6.1.7601])  and am using both LV 2012 (12.0.1f5 32bit) and LV 2015 (15.0.1f7 32bit).   I let(forced) office upgrade to 2016 (16.0.7726.1049 32 bit) because I thought it would be nice to have the replace feature in Visio.  smh.

I have just now discovered that any calls to the "automation open" primitive fail and I can no longer interact with Excel.

Roll back of Office 2016 to 2013 is no longer supported by Microsoft.

In Office, File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > ActiveX Settings all options are greyed out.  I assume thanks to my corporate group policy  😕

Whats my best option to get ActiveX working again?

-uninstall office 2016 and install office 2010 from my corporate software site

-uninstall and reinstall both LabVIEW versions (2012 first of course)

-best magical option I don't know about?

[RTSLVU]

I recommend the third party add on XLR8

XLR8 removes the need for Excel to be installed to read and write Excel (XLSX) files.

[Matthew_Kelton]

Make absolutely sure you have 32-bit office and not 64-bit office.  64-bit office doesn't have ActiveX components for automation.  32-bit office does.  The settings you mentioned are for using ActiveX in Office, not using Office in another program.

It is possible that your IT department has unregistered/blocked the OCX files for Office, so I would imagine that all the reinstalling in the world won't help you.

If you want to go back, I think all you would have to do is uninstall Office and then install the older version.

[beavercreek]

I uninstalled office 2016, reinstalled office 2010 and still had errors

-2147319779 "library not registered"  sumthin sumthin

Then I followed the advice i found in this thread:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Excel-library-not-registered/m-p/3008651#M68384

which points to "Broke Excel Interop COM assembly after installing/removing 2013 beta release"

which contains:

Based on your issue, I would suggest you a solution like this
Open the regedit editor.
Open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT >> TypeLib >> {00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} (The Excel PIA key is {00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046})
Delete the lasted version folder (The Excel 2013 is 1.8)

In my registry I had both a 1.7 and a 1.9 keys under the Excel PIA key.  I deleted the 1.9, and now ActiveX works again!  I'm wondering if I had known about this registry key business I could have avoided removing 2016.  Just as well, I deserve what I get for being an "early" adopter.

[beavercreek]

So... It turns out I have an Office 365 Outlook mailbox so, Office 2010 could not be used...(@#$%^)

I got an IT person to install Office 2013, struggled with multiple entries in the Excel PIA keys, manually deleted non-installed versions for both the Excel and Office keys (Office is {2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52}), and never had any success.  Exhausted from the battle I returned to the scene of the crime and re-installed Office 2016.  After reboot I searched the registry and confirmed the Excel PIA only contained references to 1.9.

Fired up my old VI's and all is swell and working again..  🙂  😕

So, it looks like my guess from yesterday was correct, the first install of Office 2016 had left some registry shrapnel that was breaking LabVIEW/ActiveX interaction and i could have avoided a lot of wasted time had I stumbled upon the PIA registry fixes as a first stop in the battle.