Microsoft Excel

A while back you asked folks to submit calculation intensive files so that you could optimize the calculation engine.

Are those tests ongoing?

Any news to report on that?

Who sent in the most "challenging" file? How big was it? How long did it take to calculate in Excel 2007 vs previous versions?

A while back you asked folks to submit calculation intensive files so that you could optimize the calculation engine.

Are those tests ongoing?

Any news to report on that?

Who sent in the most "challenging" file? How big was it? How long did it take to calculate in Excel 2007 vs previous versions?

Hi David,

Sorry that this is a bit off the subject, but I was rereading a few old posts and I wanted to comment on two points that were made.

I one post you responded to a question regarding referncing cells from Shapes & Text boxes.  The other post was about referencing cells from chart Data Labels.  The jist of the response was that these capabilities remain in 2007.  

I have been testing since Dog food and am now in B2 and unless the technique has completely changed one can't create refernce in the worksheet from Text Boxes or Shapes.  And on the chart they can't be created in Text Boxes, Shapes, Data Labels, or Titles.  Is this me, my computer, has this feature not been completed, or has it been depreciated?

Somewhat unrelated question - is there or will there be a list of every depreciated feature, regardless of how small, which we can access?

TIA,
Shane Devenshire

If I search the Microsoft Blogs for Office 2007 I do not get a hit for your blog.  It's not a problem for me, but it might limit the number of readers you get...

Check this

https://blogs.msdn.com/categories/detail.aspx?category=Office+2007

And you'll see what I mean.

Otherwise, keep up the great work.

John


http://www.alignment-systems.com

Biff – good question.  Yes, we are testing those files plus a whole lot more.  The three winners were notified a month ago.  Measuring things like the longest turns out to be tricky, because some of the long ones use iteration, which means lots of short calcs, and others involve database queries, so do you include that time as well, etc.  I don’t think we plan to publish all the results (a lot were confidential), but I will review some of the broader findings at some point.

Shane – Let me look into the shapes and text boxes.  Yes, we will have a list of deprecated features, hopefully in a few weeks.

John – odd – let me check into it.

i apologize if this is taking the topic back to the beginning post(s) a bit much, but i have a simple enough question...

you seem to be saying that the multi-threaded capabilities are really only accessible through .xll usage, and not via VBA macros or UDFs themselves.  if i create several .xll and then write a VBA macro that utilizes these .xll, will i then be utilizing the multi-threaded capabilities when i run the macro, or will using the .xll within the VBA macro automatically "disqualify" me from the multi-threaded gains?

any info or comments on this (and/or related) topic(s) would be greatly appreciated...thanks for all the help!

It is interesting to know about excel services multi threading capability..i have some basic questions...

1) does excel services always coexist with SPS? or it can exist/installed without SPS?

2) Whether excel web access is only available as a SP web part? or it can be used in any other web application. I have this doubt because at present we use office web components in our web application. Will excel web access replace office web components? so it is not necessary for the client workstation to have the OWC.

Hi

brian - you are correct, VBA is never multithreaded.  It doesn't matter if you call something threadsafe from something non-threadsafe, you're still not threadsafe.

cmc - I have asked Eran Megiddo, Lead on Excel Services to answer your questions.  Here are his answers:

"It is interesting to know about excel services multi threading capability..i have some basic questions..."

A: Excel Services is also multi-threaded but different than the client. We currently do not support breaking out a single spreadsheet across multiple threads but rather support running different requests (against the same spreadsheet or different spreadsheets) on different threads. So if two different users are viewing and interacting with a spreadsheet on the server, each will be handled on a separate thread. The same is true if an application or user is viewing two different spreadsheets. Finally, we also optimize for calling external data queries and do that on separate threads as well.

"1) does excel services always coexist with SPS? or it can exist/installed without SPS?"

A: Excel Services is a component of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and only works in the context of MOSS. MOSS is a new server product that includes what used to be SPS functionality, as well as Content Management Serve r(CMS), Forms Server, and the rest of our Enterprise Content Management and Collaboration features. Read more at: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/servers/sharepointserver/highlights.mspx


"2) Whether excel web access is only available as a SP web part? or it can be used in any other web application. I have this doubt because at present we use office web components in our web application. Will excel web access replace office web components? so it is not necessary for the client workstation to have the OWC."

A: Excel Web Access (the web part that renders Excel Services calculated spreadsheets) is a pure HTML solution so it does not require any client download. This is different from OWC that is an ActiveX and is required to be installed on the client machine. Conceptually Excel Services solve the same scenarios and can be seen as a replacement for OWC. In this first version, they do not do everything that OWC did and therefore whether or not they are a complete replacement depends on the scenarios and specific solution. The web part, like the rest of the server lives in the context of MOSS.