ActiveX & Excel version: Summary please!

[Ian.W]

I need to dump some data into a new Excel spreadsheet from LabWindows 6.0 and save it. I believe I should be using ActiveX, which I have never used.

But ... as a minimum I need it to work on both Excel 2000 and 2002(XP). Since the ExcelReportDemo does nothing (no errors, but no results either!) on my machine with Excel 2002, I clearly have a problem.

There seems to be some conflicting info in several threads in this forum regarding the different versions of Excel. Could somebody briefly summarize where things stand on this front with ActiveX and different versions of Excel?

Some specifics to get you started:

1. Is the Excel 9.0 object library usable with Excel 2000 and 2002? In another thread (here) it was stated that 2002 was backward compatible with the 9.0 object model.
2. Do I really need to build a excel 10 .fp file, as was stated in another thread (here)?
3. Should/does the excelreportdemo.prj example work with Excel 2002?
4. Finally, as a shot at making life very easy for me, does anyone have an example program that opens a new spreadsheet, writes the contents of an array to some cells, and saves the spreadsheet?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Ian.W]

Well, I took a run at debugging the ExcelReportDemo project after being forced to restart after an XP blue screen "serious error".

Of course, the demo works for me now .....

Sorry folks!

However, a summary on the topic of using verions of Excel via ActiveX would still be appreciated.

--IW

[JuanCarlos]

Hi,

Having a different version of Excel in the target machine can have many different problems. In some cases trying to open the reference will fail. The backwards compatibility depends on the ActiveX control that you are using; it's up to the developer of the control to mantain bacjwards compatibility. The best way to go is to program for the lattest version and alert the user if that version is not present (doing some error checking).

Just use the wizard to build the fp automatically and you should be able to use the examples as a reference to port them to the newer versio of the control.

Just my 2 cents...

Regards,

Juan Carlos
N.I.