RsLinx Gateway and DDE Sharing

I have been scouring the web for the better part of two days trying to come to a concrete determination on an issue folks. I'm hoping one of you can help me.

If I am running RsLinx Gateway which is capable of multiple concurrent DDE topics simultaneously, can I access those topics from a remote client? Can I do it with Windows 7? Some of the reading that I have done, leads me to believe DDE shares were killed off with XP?

Case scenario is this, the plant is running on predominantly RsLinx Pro 2.57 still because we use a ton of excel sheets in the field, some with multiple topics required. I would like to move us forward but conversion of all of those spreadsheets doesn't look enticing and the costs associated with upgrading to RsLinx OEM aren't going to be well received as well. Is there another way?

thumperbs said:

If I am running RsLinx Gateway which is capable of multiple concurrent DDE topics simultaneously, can I access those topics from a remote client? Can I do it with Windows 7? Some of the reading that I have done, leads me to believe DDE shares were killed off with XP?

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NetDDE was included with Windows Server 2003 and XP SP2, but it was disabled by default. It was removed entirely with the release of Windows Vista.

I did an HMI/OS upgrade project several years ago that included shift reports via Excel that employed NetDDE. I added all of the required tags to the HMI application that ran on the same machine as the spreadsheet so that I could access them via local DDE as a work around.