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some thoughts... - MS Office
IT makes the world go round - and sometimes stops it...
 
 Tuesday, May 01, 2007

If you are working with a large .pst file or a large .ost file in Outlook 2007 you may have come across performance issues as described in KB932086.

Microsoft now has published an update in KB933493 which should fix this problem (including some other) and can be downloaded here.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 8:14:10 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   | 
 Thursday, August 24, 2006

Ever tried to export data from Sharepoint 2003 to Excel spreadsheet like described in this article?

Have you also discovered that exporting a rating scale would not work correctly?

Microsoft provides an appropriate KB-article (889591), which tellingly is called:
"Survey results in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and in Windows SharePoint Services are not exported to an Excel workbook if the answer to a question uses a rating scale".

Thursday, August 24, 2006 6:11:01 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [1]   |   | 
 Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Chris Parkes has published a real interesting and detailed article "Are Office Excel 2007 Files Backwards Compatible?" which really is a must-read if you will have a mixed szenario on the day Office 2007 arrives.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 9:05:39 AM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   | 
 Thursday, July 13, 2006
 Tuesday, June 06, 2006

If your users have used Excel 2000 and Pivot Table Services targeting SQL Server 2000 as data store, they probably will get the error message "User 'public' does not have permission to run DBCC TRACEON" - even if you have migrated the whole set of security settings.

Regarding to this link the only way would be to grant execute permissions on DBCC, because:
"[...] SQL Drivers send dbcc traceon(208) to server if client is MS Query for backwards compatibility reasons (turns on support for old quoted identifiers) [...]"

In SQL Server 2000, non-Sys Admins could execute DBCC Traceon (208) - SQL Server 2005 prevents non-Sys Admins from executing DBCC's. Administrators will not get aware of this effect, because they are normally allowed to start a trace in SQL 2005....
So even IF you have tested the whole bunch of Excel files in the company you would not come across this error.

What does this mean for "real life"?
Just deleting your PTS-Excel files and building new ones?
Then I would suggest Reporting Services... ;-)
Screwing your security settings?
Not exactly....
:-)

As mentioned in the forum post, Excel sends a kind of identifier within its query string, which names the calling application and should look like this in the files you are having troubles with:
"APP=Microsoft® Query;"
But have you tried to change the query string in an Excel file afterwards? It is nearly impossible...

Luckily, you could also use this coding:

Sub PT_Connect_Change()

Dim sh As Worksheet, qy As QueryTable
Dim pt As PivotTable, pc As PivotCache
Dim OldPath As String, NewPath As String
Dim rng As Range

For Each ws In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
   For Each pt In ws.PivotTables
      OldPath = pt.PivotCache.Connection
      NewPath = replace(OldPath, "APP=Microsoft® Query;", "")
      pt.PivotCache.Connection = Application.Substitute(pt.PivotCache.Connection, OldPath, NewPath)
      On Error Resume Next
      If Err.Number <> 0 Then
         'you could write an entire log here...
         msgbox ("Error")
      End If
      pt.PivotCache.Refresh
   Next pt
Next ws

End Sub

This coding loops through all Pivot Table Services Connections in your open Excel Workbook and cuts of the string "APP=Microsoft® Query;" in the connection string and after that refreshes the connection and the data.

To be able to do this without evoking the above mentioned error message do NOT start refreshing of the queries at the beginning and try to avoid any actions with data extraction / connection. After that, start the VBA Editor, paste the coding and run the Sub.
Maybe you will have to wait some minutes because of the refreshing and depending on the ammount of the data and the numbers of connection strings, but this is neccessary - I encountered problems with the connection string change without doing it.

But you could spend the time in getting a coffee, posting a comment and reading this blog, for example...

Tuesday, June 06, 2006 2:37:01 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   |  |  |   | 
 Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006 6:14:12 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   |  |   | 

Sorry, German only...

Die Slides der MS Office Solutions Conference 2005 stehen zum Download zur Verfügung.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006 6:05:52 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   |  |  |   | 

Without Office 2007 (Office 12) having hit the market you could use this for BI...
But please regard that this download is available at a Microsoft website but is not a supported product, it is just a demonstration - but it is a really good one!

Business Intelligence Portal Sample Application for Microsoft Office 2003

Extract from the website:
"The business intelligence portal sample application for Microsoft Office 2003 is an integrated, customizable, multilingual, Web-based OLAP solution that enables employees in an organization to create and share structured views (OLAP and Relational) and unstructured views (Documents and URLs), based on various data sources, such as SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, offline cube files, relational databases, SQL Server Reporting Services reports, spreadsheet data files, XML Web services, XML files, and any requested URL.
The business intelligence portal is entirely built on top of Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services. It extends Office Web components capabilities, and uses SQL Server Reporting Services. The BIP Viewer is a smart Web Part that can show multiple views from multiple sources and filter data based on Web Part connections with other Web Parts such as the Business Scorecard accelerator.
The business intelligence portal also contains an add-in for Office 2003, that enables end users to consume reports and OLAP-based views (charts and PivotTable reports) directly into Microsoft Outlook®, Microsoft PowerPoint®, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Word documents. This can streamline their daily work, and enhance their business productivity."

Wednesday, February 22, 2006 4:12:49 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   |  |  |  |  |  |  |   | 
 Thursday, January 12, 2006

The Care Management reference implementation for MS Office 2003 contains sample code, templates, and guidance that demonstrate the possibilities in using the Microsoft Office System to address critical business issues.

Extract from the website:
"Intended for developers and IT implementers, this download of sample code, templates, and guidance demonstrates one possibility for implementing a solution to extend care management programs to more members using the Microsoft Office System. The content provided with the reference implementation illustrates how to use Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2003 XML-forms to streamline task management and to utilize Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to implement a unified process and documentation approach."

This download is related to the MS Healthcare initiative, which can be found here.

Thursday, January 12, 2006 6:16:57 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   |  |   | 
 Thursday, December 29, 2005

Ohad has listed many blogs by "Microsoft Program Managers of Office 12" where you will be able to gain tons of informations! Ohad, great work!

You will find his posting here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/israelio/archive/2005/12/21/433653.aspx

My personal favorites:

Thursday, December 29, 2005 7:44:14 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   | 
 Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Brian Jones, a program manager in Office, provides some information about "New default XML formats in the next version of Office" in his blog.

Sounds interesting.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:19:48 PM (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, UTC+01:00)  #     Author:Markus Fischer   Comments [0]   | 
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