Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

MSDN Blog Postings » Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

MSDN Blog Postings » Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:53:58 GMT

PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/12/09/building-an-excel-xll-in-cc-with-vs-2008/

Invoking Native Excel UDFs From Managed Code (Pt1)

Andrew Whitechapel — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:58:54 GMT

As part of a little ongoing investigation, I wanted to communicate between a managed add-in and a native

Invoking Native Excel UDFs From Managed Code (Pt1)

Noticias externas — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:44:57 GMT

As part of a little ongoing investigation, I wanted to communicate between a managed add-in and a native

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Steve Dalton — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:25:16 GMT

There is a memory leak in the function __declspec(dllexport) char* WINAPI GetChars(void). Dynamically allocated strings should be returned using XLOPERs or XLOPER12s and freed using xlAutoFree and xlAutoFree12 repsecitvely.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

flourishing — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:04:08 GMT

i can't build this project as your article.

first report don't have frmwk32.lib, then i delete that from the project's settings. after that it reports that :

1>xlFunctions.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _TempStr12 referenced in function "int __stdcall xlAutoOpen(void)" (?xlAutoOpen@@YGHXZ)

1>xlFunctions.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _Excel12f referenced in function "int __stdcall xlAutoOpen(void)" (?xlAutoOpen@@YGHXZ)

1>xlFunctions.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _debugPrintf referenced in function "int __stdcall xlAutoOpen(void)" (?xlAutoOpen@@YGHXZ)

1>xlFunctions.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _TempInt12 referenced in function "struct xloper12 * __stdcall xlAddInManagerInfo12(struct xloper12 *)" (?xlAddInManagerInfo12@@YGPAUxloper12@@PAU1@@Z)

can you please tell me how to fix this? thank you. my mail is 361571@qq.com

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:59:39 GMT

Yes, I should have pointed out that frmwrk32.lib is the output from the framewrk.sln solution. This solution is part of the Excel SDK, and is installed to a subfolder under <Excel2007XLLSDK install path>\samples\framewrk. You need to build the framewrk.sln to generate the frmwrk32.lib.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

flourishing — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:36:45 GMT

thanks ,it works now.

Mr andreww ,can i talk to you ? do you have any messanger like skype or msn or yahoo messanger ? thank you.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

flourishing — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:14:42 GMT

Mr andreww would you please modify this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/178474/ so i can follow your article step by step? i use vs 2008, but i follow this article, i failed.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:30:18 GMT

Re Steve Dalton's comment on the memory leak: you're absolutely correct. I've committed the crime of over-simplification. For the purposes of this blog post, I wanted to build up gradually from a simply-typed function to one that uses XLOPERs, but I should have just stuck with XLOPERs in the first place. Thanks for pointing this out.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

flourishing — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:45:06 GMT

hi andreww, i a a newbie, i have some questions, i hope you can help me. thank you.

in c++

how to get a workbooks's worksheetss count?

how to get all worksheets' name ?

how to get set a cells's value and forluma (need one example)

how to reference a cell,(in vb, use thisworksheets.cells(a,b).value ...) in c++?

thank you.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:28:40 GMT

Hi Flourishing

You need to search the documentation for answers to all your questions. The Office 2003 VBA Language Reference is here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190882(office.11).aspx

and the Office 2007 equivalent is here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa432027.aspx

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

flourishing — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:29:19 GMT

thank you.

but i want to know how to do that with c++ not vba. can you give me some guid?

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:46:37 GMT

The object model is the same, regardless of which language you're using. Of course, you'll have to convert the code samples into C++, but that should be fairly trivial.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

flourishing — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:04:56 GMT

thanks. still need your guid.

i have read many docs.

in vs2008 if i create a project ,type use mfc dll, the dll builded, excel report not a xll. change to win32dll it's ok. excel can recogize the function in xll.

but if i want to use objects about excel, docs said only can add the class to mfc project, what can i do ?

thank you. if you spend some time to complete a sample will be very appreciated. i just want a xll that has a menu, the menu call a function, that function add a formula "=1+1" to all sheets's cell "A5" . it's easy for you, for me is very difficult. i have spend more time on this. please give some help. i'm sorry to disturb you, but there is not many people knows c++ xll develop, i have searched the internet, you are the only man i have found so professional. i hope you can help me.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Jordan Blaydes — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:05:26 GMT

Thanks for the walkthrough Andrew! I am rusty on the C++ side, so I wanted to warn others of my folly: Where andrew instructs you to add the first two C++ project settings, make sure you actually have C++ files in the project (add the .c, .h, and .def files first)- otherwise the tab C++ under project settings will not show up in VS2008!!!

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Anand Raj — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:40:00 GMT

LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'LIBCD.lib'

wile compiling i received this msg can any one find a solution for this

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:49:18 GMT

Anand - libcd.lib is the static library for the debug single threaded version of the C runtime. Visual Studio no longer supports this version of the C runtime: instead you need to use the multi-threaded version (libcmtd.lib) or the dynamically linked version (msvcrtd.lib). You should change your linker settings. Alternatively, install the Microsoft Windows SDK, which includes libcd.lib.

one question!

jerry — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:30:34 GMT

I want to arbitrarily selected to the ranks of the cell, including the merger of the cell,

XLOPER xCellRef;

xCellRef.val.sref.ref.rwFirst,

xCellRef.val.sref.ref.rwLast,

xCellRef.val.sref.ref.colFirst,

xCellRef.val.sref.ref.colLast

how can I get rwFirst, rwLast, colFirst, colLast?

thank you very much !

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Marcus T — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:50:33 GMT

I am not able to build your example.

Please help.

This is the error message I got:

1>------ Build started: Project: SimpleXll2007, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------

1>Linking...

1> Creating library C:\Users\tanchonghui\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\SimpleXll2007\Debug\SimpleXll2007.lib and object C:\Users\tanchonghui\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\SimpleXll2007\Debug\SimpleXll2007.exp

1>LINK : warning LNK4098: defaultlib 'MSVCRT' conflicts with use of other libs; use /NODEFAULTLIB:library

1>xlFunctions.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _debugPrintf referenced in function _xlAutoOpen@0

1>C:\Users\tanchonghui\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\SimpleXll2007\Debug\SimpleXll2007.xll : fatal error LNK1120: 1 unresolved externals

1>Build log was saved at "file://c:\Users\tanchonghui\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\SimpleXll2007\SimpleXll2007\Debug\BuildLog.htm"

1>SimpleXll2007 - 2 error(s), 1 warning(s)

========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:25:01 GMT

jerry - this is really a question about XLOPERs - and you're more likely to get an accurate answer if you post the question to the Excel programming forum: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.excel.programming&lang=en&cr=US

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:41:28 GMT

Marcus - the debugPrintf function is defined in the Excel XLL SDK, and documented here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687879.aspx

Did you forget to add a link dependency on frmwrk32.lib?

For completeness, here are the commandline link arguments in my project:

/OUT:"c:\Temp\SimpleXll2007\SimpleXll2007\Debug\SimpleXll2007.xll" /INCREMENTAL /NOLOGO /LIBPATH:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Excel2007XLLSDK\lib" /DLL /MANIFEST /MANIFESTFILE:"Debug\SimpleXll2007.xll.intermediate.manifest" /MANIFESTUAC:"level='asInvoker' uiAccess='false'" /DEF:"c:\Temp\SimpleXll2007\SimpleXll2007\SimpleXll2007.def" /DEBUG /PDB:"c:\Temp\SimpleXll2007\SimpleXll2007\Debug\SimpleXll2007.pdb" /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS /DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT /MACHINE:X86 /ERRORREPORT:PROMPT xlcall32.lib frmwrk32.lib kernel32.lib user32.lib gdi32.lib winspool.lib comdlg32.lib advapi32.lib shell32.lib ole32.lib oleaut32.lib uuid.lib odbc32.lib odbccp32.lib

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

jerrydady — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:15:06 GMT

Hi,andreww,I post the question to the Excel programming forum,

but nobody answer my question,

could you tell me other solutions?

Thank you very much!

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

cpsagman — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:52:07 GMT

For Marcus T: If you built a release version of frmwrk32.lib then the debugPrintf function will not be included. You need to build a debug version of frmwrk32.lib in order to get debugPrintf. As for the other error, just add /NODEFAULTLIB:MSVCRT to the Linker command line found in Project...Properties...Linker...Command Line.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

John D — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:03:04 GMT

Hi Andrew, I built and running successfully in Excel 2007. However, I couldn't run it under Excel 2003, I would like my add-in to be backward compatible, do you have any ideas? Thank you.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:20:55 GMT

John - my post talked specifically about the 2007 version of the XLL SDK. This was updated for Excel 2007 and contains features that obviously only work in Excel 2007 (for example, XLOPER12 or xlAutoRegister12). Full details are in the online SDK documentation I linked to in my post. Specific information on building XLLs that are back-compatible with earlier versions is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687884.aspx.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Mousum Dutta — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:01:54 GMT

I have created a .XLL with VS2005 and EXCEL2007 SDK.

1. I have created a MFC share DLL

2. I have included all necessay files (XLCALL32.LIB, xlcall.h, and all framewrk files (instead of FRMWRK.LIB)

3. I have included the following in all .cpp file

a. #include "stdafx'h"

b. #ifdef _DEBUG

#define new DEBUG_NEW

#endif

"xlAutoOpen, xlAddInManagerInfo, xlAutoClose, xlAutoFree" (I have registered only one function)

are as usual

but if I open excel and close then it is showing memory leaks

'EXCEL.EXE': Unloaded 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\MSOSTYLE.DLL'

Detected memory leaks!

Dumping objects ->

{88} normal block at 0x04D750E8, 10240 bytes long.

Data: < > CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD

{87} normal block at 0x04D728A8, 10240 bytes long.

Data: < > CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD

{86} normal block at 0x04D70068, 10240 bytes long.

Data: < > CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD

{85} normal block at 0x03FFC008, 10240 bytes long.

Data: < > 18 C0 FF 03 CD CD CD CD 02 00 CD CD CD CD CD CD

{84} normal block at 0x03FF2EC8, 52 bytes long.

Data: < x > 04 00 00 00 78 11 00 00 08 C0 FF 03 00 00 00 00

{83} normal block at 0x03FF2E80, 12 bytes long.

Data: < . > 01 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 CC 2E FF 03

Object dump complete.

'EXCEL.EXE': Unloaded 'C:\Documents and Settings\mousum.dutta\Desktop\XLLMemLickage\MyXLL\debug\MyXLL.xll'

I can send the project if you are interested in this problem.

Mousum Dutta

mousum.dutta@gmail.com

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 01:06:03 GMT

Mousum - does your UDF use strings? See Steve Dalton's comment about a memory leak bug in my original code (and my response later).

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

amborish — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:42:45 GMT

I have created a XLL using Excel 2007 SDK. But when i am trying to load the xll in a fresh computer it is not getting loaded for vista with excel 2007 installed. Is anything else is required to load that. It is working for 2003 excel with vista.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:07:21 GMT

amborish - what happens when you click the Browse button in Excel's Add-Ins dialog? Does your XlL get listed in the dialog?

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

D Dey — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:24:41 GMT

Hi Andrew

I've tried your XLL - your UDF appears in the formula automplete list. Is it possible to add a screentip too??

Thanks

Debs

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:32:14 GMT

Debs - no, Excel does not support tooltips for UDFs, only for built-in functions.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

robert meijer — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:34:02 GMT

Andrew, I have succesfully build an run an exclel xll with vs2008 on my vista 64 machine. It runs both with excel 2007 and 2003 (I take care of XLOPER and XLOPER12,etc). My XLL (C++) does not depend on special external libraries except for the ones you also use and C++ needs. In project setting I used all your setting above for compiling and linking.

However, excel on another fresh xp 32 machine complains with "noth a valid add in" with a copy of the xll.

I have set the system path to the place where this xll is, I put it, after experimenting with other locations, in the same directory as xlcall32 is located.

I have run Dependency Walker and it complained that msvcr90.dll and dwmapi.dll (did not expect this dll!)was missing. These I supplied to the same directory. This, was no remedy.

Do you have a receipe to create a portable XLL?

Robert

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

robert meijer — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:45:37 GMT

Some dependency walker output...

Robert

LoadLibraryW("C:\Documents and Settings\muphy\Bureaublad\bfx\BfX.xll") called from "EXCEL.EXE" at address 0x3048C029.

Loaded "BFX.XLL" at address 0x10000000. Successfully hooked module.

LDR: LdrpWalkImportDescriptor() failed to probe C:\Documents and Settings\muphy\Bureaublad\bfx\BfX.xll for its manifest, ntstatus 0xc0150002

Unloaded "BFX.XLL" at address 0x10000000.

LoadLibraryW("C:\Documents and Settings\muphy\Bureaublad\bfx\BfX.xll") returned NULL. Error: De toepassing kan niet worden gestart omdat de configuratie van de toepassing onjuist is. Het opnie

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:30:41 GMT

Robert - the dependency walker error re dwmapi.dll is probably a red herring. This is a delay-loaded DLL and therefore is not normally loaded unless one of its functions is called - and that won't happen on XP. So this is irrelevant - unless of course you've set compiler options to force-load all delay-loaded DLLs?

Also, are you dynamically linking to system DLLs that might only get installed with VS (and are therefore not on your clean XP machine)? Try statically linking instead.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

robert meijer — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:24:54 GMT

Thanks,

I solved the problem.

I inherited debugPrintf calls from your code, and added some of my own, without thinking of the consequences.

To solve the problems I put #ifdef arround them all, e.g.

#ifdef _DEBUG

debugPrintf("Excel version ");

debugPrintf(versie);

debugPrintf("\n");

#endif

Then your settings above for compiler and linker work fine. I created a straightforward setupproject in which I included the windows installer and de VC++ runtime libraries (X86) as a prerequisite.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

AlexZhang — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:46:31 GMT

robert meijer said：

.......

Change "LIBRARY SimpleXll2007.xll" to "LIBRARY SimpleXll2007" , worked on XP sp2

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

lois — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:36:29 GMT

thanks for this example. when I get to the last point, i.e. inserting the functions, I don't see the Simple2007Xll category; this even though I added the Simple2007Xll.xll.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:56:41 GMT

lois - it's hard to say what might be wrong with your setup.

In Excel, when you add an XLL in the Add-ins dialog, this adds an entry in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Excel\Options named OPEN, OPEN1, OPEN2 etc. This has the value: /R "XXX", where XXX is the path to your XLL, eg:

/R "C:\Temp\SimpleXll2007\SimpleXll2007\Debug\SimpleXll2007.xll"

If you unregister your add-in and then uncheck the box in the Add-ins dialog, Excel will throw up an error dialog: "Cannot find add-in XXX. Delete from list?". Replying Yes to this prompt will delete the registry key when Excel next shuts down.

If your XLL is listed in the registry, and shows up in the add-ins dialog, it should also show up in the function wizard - assuming you've registered each function against a function wizard category. In my example, I have arrays of REGISTER parameters in UDFs.h, where each function is registered to the "SimpleXll2007" category. The registration takes place in the xlAutoOpen function in xlFunctions.c.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Sylvain — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:29:06 GMT

I have also successfully built and run an XLL using VS 08 Express. However, the XLL won't load on another PC unless I install VS 08 Express on it>

Using Dependency Walker, I can see that there are calls to MSVCRT.DLL and a lot of others libs that are installed by VS 08 Express.

As I would like to avoid telling the users of my XLL to install VS08, do you know what's the best solution to ensure they have all the required DLLs?

My code is not calling any DLLs as I'm using only the libs from the SDK framework.

Thanks,

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:58:48 GMT

Sylvain - MSVCRT.DLL is the Microsoft C Run-Time library. This used to be deployed as part of the OS, but now more recent versions are deployed instead. You're right that deploying VS to your users' machines is not a reasonable approach. You have a couple of options.

1. You could continue to dynamically link to msvcrt.dll, and deploy it as a private DLL with your XLL solution.

2. You could statically link to mscvrt instead. This is probably the simpler approach, as deploying private versions of msvcrt.dll may introduce servicing issues.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

Sylvain — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:46:07 GMT

Andrew,

MSVCRT(9).DLL is not the only library that is needed on the client machine, and I was actually not able to identify all of them because there are so many (unless I'm doing something wrong).

Has anyone here deployed VS08 XLL to non-developer machines? If so, how did you link, and what else did you install on the user's machines?

Thank

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2005

Prem — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:24:50 GMT

Hi,

I have created a XLL project in VS2005 which calls .Net module using the COM (*.tlb). It runs fine but when i save the excel file in "save as" mode, close and then open a new excel sheet, recovery pane appears with the saved file name. I am not returning any XLOPERS and free'ing any excel returned structure.

Can anybody suggest where the problem could be?

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

AlexesDad — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:15:19 GMT

Heres a clip demonstrating how to create a C++ XLL with Visual Studio 2008 & XLW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mpw5_JW7T4

XLW is free & open source and can be downloaded from here:

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=45222&package_id=37893&release_id=690866

It also allows you create xlls in C#.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

AlexesDad — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:38:58 GMT

..sorry the link for download should have been

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=45222&package_id=37893&release_id=690866

i.e http not https

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

James — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:08:32 GMT

do you need the .objs(memorymanager,etc) when you compile the framework? or do you just need the framewrk.h and the frmwrk32.lib(I want to include them in the same project dir)

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

andreww — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:45:10 GMT

James - no, the only binaries you need are the frmwrk32.lib and xlcall32.lib.

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

james — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:40:14 GMT

I'm getting a

EXCEL.EXE: 0xC0000005: Access violation writing location

in TempStr in the framework.

I need to use TempStr to add a menu at the top or it doesn't register.

I've been fallowing this as menu adding reference:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/178474

If I use TempStrConst it doesn't crash but it doesn't add the menus any idea on how to solve this?

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

james — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:57:25 GMT

That's weird I built it about 10 more times and it started adding the menus with TempStrConst, now it can't find the "macros" for the UDF in the dll..

re: Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

ahmed — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:15:33 GMT

Do anyone know where the reference guide to Excel4()/Excel12() is ? I want to write data to cells but passing through XLCALL.h isn't really helpful because there is no description on what they do.