S7 Comments and Descriptions

I'm making changes to the ladder program of an S7-224. Unfortunately, I uploaded the program and have been working without comments and descriptions of the ladder logic. I have a somewhat outdated(but useful) hardcopy of the program that does have the comments and descriptions that I use as a reference.

I was not the original developer of the program. It was developed by someone else on my current laptop running Windows 98. Over the weekend that laptop was upgraded with Windows XP.

Is there a way to transfer the comments and descriptions to the current program I uploaded on the laptop. It so, how? What I refer to as comments and descriptions may not be the same designation given by Siemens. Basically it is the literal descriptions of the ladder logic in the program.

The plc program consists of a list of networks. In your programmer, each network has code and comments. In the plc, each network just has code. When you upload, the code gets overwritten, but the comments stay associated with the network. For S7300/400 plcs, I re-align comments by inserting blank networks in the plc version (on-line edit but do not save changes), and then upload the program to the programmer. I would assume the same applies to the 200 range.

Online edits are not possible with the S7-200. You can copy-paste the symbol table, but as for rung comments I think that it's not possible. I hope someone can prove me wrong!

I'm assuming your using S7/Microwin, if that's the case then unfortunately no, i dont think it's possible, i've been left in that situation myself a few times too and have tried many a time to find a solution to getting back the comments/symbolic addressing but to no avail. I hope you wernt using the TD200 Wizard either as that wont work when you've done an upload.

Oh well, I will add the comments after I am finished reprogramming. No, I did not use the TD200 wizard to upload.

Here's a solution, but it's kind of messy.

1) Export your uploaded program to an AWL file.

2) Edit the file with notepad or your favorite text editor and put the comments back into the appropriate places in the AWL file.

3) Import the program back into the project.

I'd recommend you import into a copy of your original, in case anything goes badly.

You'll need a text version of the comments.

The comments will only be for the AWL(STL) version unless you put them in the network comment section. Microwin doesn't support element comments in KOP(LAD) or FUP(FBD).

I don't know if this is any better solution than Cut/Copy/Paste directly into the comment editor, but it's another, maybe preferable way.

It's kind of weird, but if you export from main, it exports all the POU's, but if you export from a POU it only exports that POU.

That's another way to get around the lack of CCP for older versions. Not that you asked....

Hope this helps.