Excel crashes and Solidworks

[cknull]

I have been having a lot of trouble with both software packages.

I am running on Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 1

SolidWorks 2003 SP3

Microsoft Excel 2002 SP-2

I don't know how to reproduce this problem, but it happens very frequently. When I start up Excel on its own it crashes. Asks me if I want to recover my work and send an error report. This happens continuously until I do on of the following:

The first one I found was to start a new SolidWorks file, insert a design table. Edit Table in New Window. Now I can open any existing Excel file. This also works by opening an existing SolidWorks file that has a design table.

The second way I found, by accident, was to open an older file, which happened to be a copy of a SolidWorks design table. After that Excel works fine.

Sometimes when working with Bills Of Material in SolidWorks drawings Excel will crash also.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Any ideas?

 

[EdDanzer]

If you have Excel open in SolidWorks and try to do anything in Excel on a different file both will crash. I don’t think SolidWorks shares Excel well.
The solution is to make sure you do not have Excel open in SolidWorks if you leave SolidWorks, if editing a BOM, close editing before leaving SolidWorks.
Are you trying to copy information from a file in Excel to an Excel file in SolidWorks?
Will Excel run if SolidWorks is closed?

 

[cknull]

I'm not trying to copy anything, just work within files.
Excel won't run on its own once the crashing cycle starts, I have to go through Solidworks to get it to run.

 

[SBaugh]

Sounds like you might need to repair your Excel installation or reinstall it.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[cknull]

I've re-installed Excel 2 or 3 times now.

 

[EdDanzer]

I was reading about crashing problems from SolidWorks, it suggested to look to see if Excel is running if you are having crashing problems. I think if you have done a task within SolidWorks that uses Excel, or have done something in Excel, you need to use Task manager to see if the task is complete before moving on. I have found if you get to far ahead if the process the machine will crash.

 

[Arlin]

What version of Office or Excel are you running?

From SWX website:
Design Tables or Bills of Materials and Office 97 SR-2:
If you are using Design Tables or Bills of Materials, we strongly recommend you install Microsoft Office 97 Service Release 2 (SR-2). Installing this Microsoft Office Service Release fixes a Microsoft problem that causes either or both Excel and SolidWorks processes to remain running when you exit SolidWorks.

 

[JNR]

I disagree with EdDanzer's global comment. It may be true in certain circumstances, but we use Excel both opened from in and out of SolidWorks and routinely open other Excel files at the same time without any problems at all. We do this repeatedly all day long and rely on it for a design automation tool I developed. We have found the SolidWorks/Excel interaction to be extremely robust.

It definitely sounds like there is something unclean about your Excel installation.

Here's a thought. Are you on a network? If so do you have Excel installed locally on your system (you should) or is it by network access (bad). Is your system trying to execute from both versions?

 

[cknull]

We have one machine that this works just fine on as JNR says he does, there is another machine where it has been a thorn in our side. It is installed locally, but access files over a network. We have re-installed both programs many times with no changes. Solidworks has been of no help as has Microsoft as has our in-house support crew. I was just looking to see if anyone has had this problem before we rebuild the machine from scratch.

Thanks for the help.

 

[rocheey]

One thing I noticed about some OLE applications (including SW), is that when the parent app has more than one version or sub-app to run when starting the application, that the registry stores the last used version. Then, on consecutive OLE/DDE calls, this version will be used.

Manually starting SW explorer, then shutting it down, then attempting to start SW from Excel can do much the same thing: instead of SW being started, SW explorer would be.

 

[EdDanzer]

Sorry I didn’t clarify better.
If you have the cursor in a cell of Excel either in a BOM or an Excel worksheet and try to move to the other window is where I have seen problems.