DDE range is blanked using Lookout 4.5.1

[CptDondo]

See <>

I am experiencing with Lookout Direct 4.5.1; the fix above doesn't work for me.

Please contact me if possible at yans@piercecorporation.com with a fix.

[JedRetherford]

CptDondo,

Thanks for making your post here in the National Instruments' Discussion Forums, and congratulations on your first post.

After reading over your post, I am not entirely sure what it is that you are trying to ask. If you could make an additional post with some more information, I believe that it would help this forum to assist you more effectively. When you make your post, some things that would be helpful to include are: What you are trying to do with your Lookout program, what you have tried previously, what errors (if any) that you are receiving, whether your program was working previously, and any other relevant details related to your program.

I believe that with those details, these forums would be better equipped to assist you.

Regards,
Jed R.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[CptDondo]

OK, it looks as though the forum software stripped out the HTML link. Without it, my message makes no sense. 😞

There is a documented issue with Lookout 4.0, where using DDE with Excel causes all of the cells in the DDE range to be blanked.

See digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/862567530005F09C8625663A0077CDC1 (hopefully stripping the http: off will let the link through).

If that link doesn't work for you, or if it gets stripped, search the ni.com KB for "Using a Datatable and DDE with MS Excel Causes Cells in Excel to Disappear".

I am experiencing this issue with 4.5.1; specifically the first symptom. The fix offered in the KB doesn't work. Using the table.cbx file included in the KB causes Lookout 4.5.1 to crash with an illegal instruction, and only modifying the lookout.ini files doesn't fix the problem. The KB is specific in that the fix only applies to 4.0, anyway.

My symptom is that as soon as I open the spreadsheet for writing - in other words as soon as there are any attempts to write to the spreadsheet - the entire DDE range is erased, and only the cell I am writing appears. This happens every time I write to to the spreadsheet, so that I have an empty range except for the most recent cell update.

I can read from a spreadsheet using DDE just fine.

Thanks,

--Yan

[JedRetherford]

Yan,

Thanks for reposting your information.

After reading your post, I did some checking on Lookout 4.5 and from what I could find, we have not seen any other reports of the problem that you are seeing in Lookout 4.5. Please keep in mind that you are using Lookout Direct, which is a specialized version of Lookout that is customized and sold by Automation Direct. It is possible that Automation Direct changed something that is causing the problems that you are seeing. You may want to contact Automation Direct and ask them if they are aware of any problems.

As an alternative, I will also attach the table.cbx file from Lookout 4.5 to this post. You may want to try this file and see if it makes any difference in your application.

Please post back if you have any additional questions.

Regards,
Jed R.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments