my Computer Quest: Remote data not accessible: Excel 2016

16 July, 2017

Remote data not accessible: Excel 2016

English: Illustration of subroutine in Microsoft Excel that reads the x-column, squares it, and writes the squares into the y-column. All proprietary Microsoft art work has been cropped to leave a generic spreadsheet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Use of user-defined function in Microsoft Excel. All proprietary Microsoft art work has been cropped to leave a generic spreadsheet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

16 July 2017, 10:20 PM

Remote data not accessible:
To access this data Excel needs to start another application. Some legitimate applications on your computer could be used maliciously to spread viruses or damage your computer. Only click Yes if you trust the source of theis workbook and you want to let the workbook start the application. Start application 'SV.EXE'? YES NO

I am working on PcVue data extraction using Excel 2016. That was the response thrown by Excel after I typed "=SV|DB!DATE" and pressed [Enter].

Of course, I clicked on YES, but then again, this is the result:

“Cannot run ‘SV.EXE’. The program or one of its components is damaged or missing.”

Beats me!

This is another one of those DDE nightmares, where the support for a legacy system is required even when already using Windows 10 64 bit and Excel 2016.

I searched for more articles using the string "remote data not accessible" and well, I got some from Technet, and some from Microsft forums, and some scattered Q&A here and there, even in StackOverflow. And I think the solution was derived from one of the Microsoft forums Q&A.

The advice is to make Excel run as Admin. So I did that. I modified the shortcut of Excel 2016 to make it execute, 'Run as administrator'.

And yes, it worked! I was able to extract data from PcVue iNexus 10/11.2 into Excel using DDE!

Then the C# program wouldn't still work, though.

But getting the idea from what I did to Excel, I looked for the compiled program, set it also to execute and 'Run as administrator', well, what do you know?

It also worked!

So while I cannot make use of DDE through Visual Studio's Ctrl+F5. I just do a build, set the compiled exe file's property to 'Run ad administrator', and voila! It would be working like a charm!

I hope this helps somebody working on the same legacy system, DDE, and still make it work.

Till then!