Historian Client Office add-in (workbook and report) on Office 64-bit version

Search Insource Solutions TN - 1078.

It is not actually an Install like the old 32 bit product

Search Insource Solutions TN - 1078.

It is not actually an Install like the old 32 bit product

Hi Danny. This is for the Insight add in? not the Workbook/Report part

The customer has for many years been using the Excel Add-in for Historian.

Not to be confused with the Insight add-in, perhaps in time we could get the user to start using this plug-in as an replacement, but they have multiple reports and files in their organization and it is already integrated in their daily work.

Now that they start replacing computers and the new installations include the 64-bit version of Office they start to encounter issues.

If you upgrade to Office 64-bit version there is a heap of error messages when starting Excel on a computer that previously had the plugin installed, so I understand that there are issues to be resolved.

So if there is no plan to support the 64-Bit version of Office there will be a lot of work converting existing reports to the way the Insight add-in works. 

The "Classic" (32-bit only) add-in will not support 64-bit Office, but the new "Task Pane" add-in (what Richard called the "Insight add-in" above) supports both 32-bit and 64-bit and can be used side-by-side in 32-bit Excel. These aren't exactly 1:1, but the Task Pane add-in supports the most commonly used capabilities from the Classic one, but organized differently.

Note the Task Pane add-in was originally introduced with Historian 2017 Update 3 and has had noteworthy enhancements in each subsequent release, so if there are capabilities that seem to be "missing", be sure you understand what is included in the latest release. Where you still find important gaps, please highlight those use cases. 

Historian 2023 R2 added a "migration utility" to assist users in migrating spreadsheets originally created for the Classic add-in to convert them to use the Task Pane add-in. It isn't perfect, but targets 80% migration from Classic. 

Thank you Elliott! That was exactly the kind of information I was after, but just for clarification, there is no plan to have the "Classic" add-in supported on 64-bit Office? Just want to make sure that it is worth the effort in convincing the customer to migrate

We have been trying to evaluate the new Task Pane add-in, named Insight as per the technote provided earlier, or the AVEVA published article with similar information

https://softwaresupportsp.aveva.com/#/knowledgebase/details/000032879?lang=en_us

And even this guide

https://knowledge.insourcess.com/?title=Operational_Efficiency/Historian/Maximize_%26_Optimize/TN_-_1207_Troubleshooting_Excel_Insight_Add-in

Unfortunately we end up in the same state, both on the customer environment or in our lab, or even on my personal computer.

The Add-in installation usually get stuck in 'Loading Add-ins' 

or mostly we get the "Error installing add-ins".

Any Ideas on what could be the reason for this error is very appreciated, if not, then we will open a support ticket to try and resolve it once and for all.

I assume this is the migration tool available?

I will try to test this out, but initially I encountered some errors when trying to run it using an excel file.

Perhaps due to running it on a office 32-bit, will try and test it again on my 64-bit installation.

An error occurred Could not load file or assembly "DocumentFormat.OpenXML.Framework"...

Correct, no plans to offer a 64-bit version of the Classic add-in.

In terms of problems loading the Task Pane add-in, the details differ between Office versions (even between builds) and Historian server versions, so I recommend gathering those details and contacting Tech Support. On the Excel side, the key difference is which version of the "ExcelApi" is supported and this is the best reference I've seen for that. 

Duly noted, I will do that,

once again, thank you for your prompt reply!

I did get a very quick reply from the support-team once I created my ticket.

To resolve the issue of failing to load the Sidebar add-in i had to edit the file in the folder
C:\ProgramData\Historian\InsightAddIn

(I have to put the string in a code block to avoid the forum post to be modified by the system)

replacing the string 

  <VersionOverrides xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/taskpaneappversionoverrides" xsi:type="VersionOverridesV1_0">

with 

  <VersionOverrides xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/taskpaneappversionoverrides/1.1" xsi:type="VersionOverridesV1_1">

Now that plug in loads as expected

This problem started with a recent (some time since early July) Excel update. The change Richard shared helps, but there are still issues with the custom functions. We're working with Microsoft to better  understand this and find a better solution. 

Yes, that is the correct utility. It will definitely work with Excel 32-bit installed (I've done this), but I don't believe there is any direct dependency on Excel. In my Historian 2023 R2 (RTM) system that assembly is installed in the same directory as the utility, but it reports a file version of 2.19.0.0. If you are using P01, we may have had a regression here.