Excel DDE Read/Write to ControlLogix....

I am sure there are people out there who use Excel to transfer data to and from a ControlLogix using DDE via custom VBA code. For those of you that do this have you noticed a slow down when doing a read from a ControlLogix using Excel 2007/2010? We have some spreadsheets that run excellent in 2003, but horribly slow in 2007/2010. Like two seconds to read a single tag. There is a technote out there about this issue #117732. At the moment there is no explanation from Rockwell.

I assume it's changes in how VBA/DDE is executed in 2007/2010, I'm curious if anyone has come across this problem, and if so what have you done to improve it?

I ran into something similar but it was not an excel version problem. Both excell 2003 and 2007 exhibited the problem. It started occurring with CLX firmware v18+. I first noticed this around May 2010 and opened a ticket with tech support. It was finally resolved in March 2011 with a hotfix to RSLinx.

The tech note for THIS problem is #114983.

The hotfix is here:

http://rockwellautomation.custhelp....on.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=114983

I'll try that out, I remember coming across that technote a few months ago when we were investigating communications problems when using a virtual machine (Virtual PC). This would have been prior to me noticing my issues with excel. I'll load that patch onto my new VMWare machine and do some testing next week.