Frustration with the Excel / Inventor relationship

[jharris]

We recently upgraded to Inventor 2011 (now 2012) from R11.  We have a few hundred iparts and assemblies we've made over the years, and we had become accustomed to being able edit a spreadsheet driven part easily and reliably.

However, starting with 2011 (and continuing with 2012), whenever I need to edit an iPart via spreadsheet, I get a dialog informing me that changes will not be reflected in the part until the Excel process closes.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I often have 2 or 3 spreadsheets open at any given time.  If I need to jump into an ipart to make a change, not only do I have to close that spreadsheet, but the others that I had open in order to close the excel process.

Previously in R11, all I had to do was close that particular workbook associated with the iPart.  Now, I have to close all workbooks, including those with no connection to the ipart, and exit Excel in order for the part to change.

It seems particularly shortsighted for Autodesk to expect the only time I would have an excel process running would be to edit an ipart, which is the impression I get from how this relationship is structured.  

Is there a workaround, script, registry hack that I can use that will allow an ipart to update when its workbook closes, rather than having to exit the entire excel process?

Workstation: Win7 64-bit, Office 2010, Inventor 2012.

[StevenFeng]

Excel 2010 open multi excel files in the same process.

Although the workbook associated with the iPart is closed, the excel process is not terminated.

Could you please firstly open all your excel files before edit the ipart table via excel?

The workbook associated with the iPart will be opened in a solo process.

Thanks,

Steven