Editing 3rd-Party Excel file through Inventor for variable changes having issues

[thenottakenname]

Hello all,

we use a linked excel sheet to control parameters of a sketch-part, which is placed into an assembly to use for the frame generator. Up until today, we could edit the excel file through Inventor (part tree -> 3rd Party -> Edit...). I mean, technically we still can, but there's some odd behaviours being exhibited. The excel file seems to freeze when it opens, you can't even "x" out of it, but if you click a column header it suddenly starts responding. You have to double click a cell to edit it, so it's still kind of wonky. Opening the excel file through Windows explorer results in correct behaviour.

We use a standard sketch-part and excel file when making a new frame, and neither of those are read-only. The only thing that has changed since yesterday is that the latest update was installed for Inventor 2020 via the desktop app, and the Vault Professional client was installed as well. This issue is occurring on multiple computers. I am not sure if this is occurring with embedded excel files; I haven't had an opportunity to test them.

Has anybody else come up against something like this? The issues I'm reading about in the forums seem to be related to embedded files, and not linked ones.

Thanks in advance!

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! This could be related how the Excel is configured to run when it is launched by Inventor. Is there a macro in the file to execute when open? Also, is an Excel session is already opened? Could you record a video of the behavior? Or, share the files here so we can take a closer look.

Many thanks!

[thenottakenname]

Hello Johnson,

attaching the Skeleton Part and the Rack Template. There isn't anything fancy about them, it's just a basic spreadsheet that Inventor is pulling parameter data from to update the rack dimensions. Excel isn't already open as well. I'll try and figure out how to do a screencast as well.

Thanks!

[thenottakenname]

Here is the screencast -- none of these issues are present if I open the spreadsheet through Explorer, only when opened through Inventor.

Edit: Here's the link, didn't seem to go through when I pasted the URL in the insert screencast section -- https://autode.sk/2Nxw2Eb

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I tried the exact workflow in the video but I did not see the problem. I am sorry I cannot reproduce it. Is your Excel.exe 32-bit or 64-bit?

Many thanks!

[thenottakenname]

Hello Johnson,

thanks for the reply. We are currently using Excel 2019 64-Bit (Version 1808, Build 10349.20017). Although these issues did start occurring after we installed the Vault Pro client on all our workstations, we have not been using the Vault as of yet. Don't know if that matters or not, but it could be useful.