Confused About Which Excel Reference to Use

[TC]

My project has a reference to the Excel 9.0 Object Library. My
understanding is that, by using a reference to 9.0, I make my
application compatible with Excel 2000, 2002, and 2003. If I use a
reference to 11.0, however, then my application is compatible only
with Excel 2003. Is that correct?

I've found that, as long as I use a reference to Excel 9.0, I get a
warning which says "There are updated custom wrappers available for
the following referenced components: Excel ,VBIDE.". The only way I
can make that warning go away is to change the reference from 9.0 to
11.0. In other words, Visual Studio is encouraging me to use 11.0,
even though 9.0 is the better choice for compatibility. Is this a
glitch in Visual Studio, or is there something going on that I don't
understand?


-TC

 

[RobinS]

What are you doing with Excel? If you are creating spreadsheets, you want
to use Excel 9.0, because anything you create with that version will be
readable by 10 and 11, but not vice versa. If you are reading
spreadsheets, you want to use 11.0, because it can read most anything in an
earlier version.

If it's just a warning, you can ignore it and your project will still
compile and work.

Robin S.
Ts'i mahnu uterna ot twan ot geifur hingts uto.

 

[TC]

What are you doing with Excel? If you are creating spreadsheets, you want
to use Excel 9.0, because anything you create with that version will be
readable by 10 and 11, but not vice versa. If you are reading
spreadsheets, you want to use 11.0, because it can read most anything in an
earlier version.

If it's just a warning, you can ignore it and your project will still
compile and work.

Robin S.
Ts'i mahnu uterna ot twan ot geifur hingts uto.

Robin,

You're right. I hadn't realized that, for people who are reading
spreadsheets, 11.0 is more appropriate. In any case, I'm writing
spreadsheets. I know I can ignore the warning, but I find it annoying
nevertheless. If Visual Studio is going to raise warnings about
perfectly legitimate code, then it should give us a way to dismiss
those warnings.

-TC

 

[RobinS]

Robin,

You're right. I hadn't realized that, for people who are reading
spreadsheets, 11.0 is more appropriate. In any case, I'm writing
spreadsheets. I know I can ignore the warning, but I find it annoying
nevertheless. If Visual Studio is going to raise warnings about
perfectly legitimate code, then it should give us a way to dismiss
those warnings.

-TC

There *is* a way to dismiss some errors or warnings. You can look in the
list displayed on the Compile tab of the project settings. In the middle
are some conditions that you can turn off as warnings.

There's another list under Debug/Exceptions, and hopefully it's in there
somewhere.

Good luck.
Robin S.