I found EXL2K TEMPLATE reports (where the template includes a run-once macro to format the result pages) take a long time to open in IE. White screen, as Ted described. When I worked up the patience, the report did finally come up -- after a 5 or 6 minute wait.

I would like to capture the raw file that WF sends, to determine whether the delay occurs even when opened from disk directly in Excel, or only when it is opened via EXCEL.EXE helper in IE. -- Can anyone advise me on how to capture the file, before Excel has had a chance to trigger the macro?

Jack,

just disable the macro, then run and save the report in .mht format.
Then you can open it in excel and step through the macro to see what's going on.

At 5-6 minutes it's either a very large document or the macro may be looping.

It may or may not be the case in this instance, but if you have page formating within your VBA code such as -
With ActiveSheet.PageSetup
.LeftHeader = ""
.CenterHeader = ""
.RightHeader = ""
.LeftFooter = ""
.CenterFooter = ""
.RightFooter = ""
.LeftMargin = Application.InchesToPoints(0.75)
.RightMargin = Application.InchesToPoints(0.75)
.TopMargin = Application.InchesToPoints(1)
.BottomMargin = Application.InchesToPoints(1)
.HeaderMargin = Application.InchesToPoints(0.5)
.FooterMargin = Application.InchesToPoints(0.5)
etc.

- Excel and the plug in will make a call to your default printer driver each change.

One way to see if this is the case would be to set your default printer to something simple such as the Microsoft XPS Document Printer (if you are on windows of course!). If the time taken to load is faster then the chances are that the page setup VBA is delaying things.

T

JG, Tony --

Thanks.

quote:

- Excel and the plug in will make a call to your default printer driver each change.

Once for each "margin" setting?
Times once per tab if I handled each tab separately? (Ouch)

Kind of new at VBA. (What - Basic without line numbers?)

I tried recording a macro, selecting all sheets, and changing print margins. The generated macro applied the changes just to ActiveSheet.

I looks like there's no way to gangpunch those changes: Selection.PageSetup is invalid ('Object does not support this property or method'); if so, one is constrained to apply changes to one sheet at a time, whether via VB or the Excel GUI.

I'll try setting these properties of the template's sheets in advance, and see whether they survive the processing in WF server.

quote:

see whether they survive the processing in WF server

Jack,

I guess you know what the answer will be!

T

Warren --

yes.

Not surprising: the very fact that Excel allows the user to address the print layout properties of only one tab at a time indicates that the properties are stored with the tab content. So not surprising that the WF report wipes it out.

I tested running the macro locally, as JG (the capped one) suggested, with a real network printer as the default. Stepping through, there was a palpable pause at each line (setting margins and other properties. Not just setting margins -- even horizontal positioning, which has no obvious dependence on the printer).

When I just let the macro Run, the handling of each tab took measured moments. When I set Snagit's print-capture as the default printer, it ran lickety-split. So, it's as you said.

-jg

This helped considerably:

Avoiding VBA's lethargic approach to Page Setup

Thanks for everyone's help, issue was resolved when 7.7.02 was reinstalled.

Ted

quote:

Avoiding VBA's lethargic approach to Page Setup

Thanks for this Jack, most helpful and interesting.

I wonder if the John Green mentioned in the cod is our JG?

T