Can i Access XLL file(Excel97) in Excel XP

[RahulA]

hi people,

I have never done Excel/VBA programming so pardon me if my questions
are very basic. Can i access an XLL file made in Excel 97 in Excel XP.
Can i write vba code in EXcel XP and access that xll file.

i had another post regarding accessing xll files from Excel XP. All i
need to know if ther is a way to reuse the XLL files through some sort
of wrapper(COM or vba from XP or shared addin in .net or something)

rahul

 

[Rob Bovey]

Hi Rahul,

XLLs have exactly the same format and work exactly the same way in Excel
XP as they do in Excel 97, so I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

--
Rob Bovey, MCSE, MCSD, Excel MVP
Application Professionals
http://www.appspro.com/

* Please post all replies to this newsgroup *
* I delete all unsolicited e-mail responses *

 

[RahulA]

What does XLL file made in Excel 97 need to run? just c compiler or
something.
We had an application written in excel 97, however now we have to
upgrade to excel XP( a corporate decision) so our old application is
not working in excel XP anymore. I am thinking that the XLL's are not
compatible with this version of excel as they use the EXcel API from
97. am i right? or totally off?

 

[Rob Bovey]

Hi Rahul,

The best thing to do is to put a break point in your code somewhere
prior to where the problem is occurring, then run it in the debugger and
step through it until you see what's happening. That's the only reliable way
to track down bugs. I'm not sure what you mean by "methods and properties of
an xll". If you're doing COM programming inside your XLL then unfortunately,
I can't help you. That stuff is way beyond my meager C++ programming
capabilities.

I haven't done anything significant with COM add-ins (I assume that's
what you mean by .NET shared add-in) because too much of my code required
backward compatibility with Excel 97. Did you recently switch to VC.NET and
recompile your project there? If so, what happens if you go back to VC6 (or
whatever version you were using) and compile it there again?

The one thing I noticed when I tried to open and recompile my XLLs in
VC.NET was that it failed to properly recognize my .DEF file, even though it
opened it as part of the project. I had to point it at the .DEF file
manually in the Project/Properties/Linker/Input-Module menu option.

--
Rob Bovey, MCSE, MCSD, Excel MVP
Application Professionals
http://www.appspro.com/

* Please post all replies to this newsgroup *
* I delete all unsolicited e-mail responses *

 

[Rob Bovey]

Hi Rahul,

<<I tried attaching the addin in to XP by browsing to the xll file and i get
the message "<path>is not a valid add-in".>>

Have you checked your DEF file setting in VC.NET? This is the error
you'd get if your project wasn't compiled with a DEF file, because the
exported function names would be mangled and Excel wouldn't be able to
recognize them.

--
Rob Bovey, MCSE, MCSD, Excel MVP
Application Professionals
http://www.appspro.com/

* Please post all replies to this newsgroup *
* I delete all unsolicited e-mail responses *

 

[Keith Willshaw]

So according to Keith, .Net Shared Add-in will not work which makes
sense because the older versions of Office will not know what .Net is
however an add-in is just a dll which should be implementing some
interfaces exposed by Excel so ideally it should be supported in XP
and higher if not 2000.

A .Net add-in is a little more than just a dll, its a dll with interfaces
complying to the new Microsoft Framework, while new versions
of Excel are planned to implement this conversion is likely to be a
painful process just as moving code from VB6 to VB .Net is
proving to be.

Keith