NetDDE Excel Help Please

HI all guru's,

I have a Windows2000 SP4 PC with Excel 2000 running on it.

I have to interface NetDDE data into Excel from various VAX stations. This data is then transfered to OSI PI Historian via OPC server interface.

The DDE Shares are set, firwall OK etc etc and Excel gets the data from the VAX stations.

After between 1-2hours excel data is no longer updated. If I restart the workbook its ok again for another 1-2hours??????

Can't find any errors in the event loggers.
Have tried all service packs of Windows 2000
Have tried all service packs of office 2000 & office 2003.
Have also switch dual core processing off.

Upgrade due in a couple of years so need to get this working.
Now really stuck and don't know where to look now?

Any help or suggestions greatly welcome.

Enable DCOM logging in Windows:

1) Open up regedit
2) Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole
3) Add the following 2 DWORD values:
ActivationFailureLoggingLevel 1
CallFailureLoggingLevel 1

After this, you need to restart the dcom programs that you're trying to use - just reboot the computer.

Now all authentication failures will be logged to the windows event log. Go to Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Event Viewer to view the logs.

Note: This information was taken from Microsoft knowledge base article 892500

I got this from a DCOM security/debugging discussion on the Inductive Automation forum. There are more tutorials and resources linked from that post.

I didn't notice this

This will simplify the registry settings for DCOM logging. Save it as a batch file, like DCOMLog.bat, and call it with "on" or "off" as a parameter, like:
c:\dcomlog.bat on

@echo off
setlocal
If {%1}=={} goto :err
if /i "%1" EQU "ON" set data=1&goto doit
if /i "%1" EQU "OFF" set data=0&goto doit
:err
@echo Syntax: DCOMErr ON^|OFF
endlocal
goto :EOF
:doit
set key="HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole"
call :quiet>nul 2>&1
endlocal
goto :EOF
:quiet
reg add %key% /V ActivationFailureLoggingLevel /T REG_DWORD /F /D %data%
reg add %key% /V CallFailureLoggingLevel /T REG_DWORD /F /D %data%

Thanks for the info.

The DCOM settings are correct as OPC to PI works.
Its just the NetDDE side between EXcel and VAX staions that keeps stopping.

So you don't think that your error might get caught in the DCOM log? Remember that NetDDE became COM which became DCOM.

Surferb,

Never thought of it like that. Shall be onsite tommorrow so will add to DCOM Log and see if anything gets Logged.

Thanks Again