IDL.XLSLINK

Table of contents

• 1 IDL.XLSLINK
• 1.1 General
• 1.2 Settings
• 1.3 Read Function
• 1.4 Export Function
• 1.5 Bugfixes
• 2 Known issues
• 3 IDL.CONNECTOR

This release of IDL.XLSLINK focusses on performance. Depending on the complexity of the Excel-document, updating formulas is up to 60% faster than before. To gain performance, the network communications had been compressed, thus reducing network bandwidth and transfer times. The algorithms for updating interdependent formulas have been rewritten to effectively reduce the workload for the update cycle. The rewritten update also prevents situations, where Excel seemd to be hanging when recalculating interdependent formulas.

The "Ribbon" Checkbox has been removed from thee settings dialog. The checkbox was needed for Excel versions 2007 and earlier to configure the addin to appear in the modern ribbon menus. Since Excel 2007 and earlier is no longer supported and due to misleading error messages, we have decided to remove the checkbox and the associated logic from the IDL.XLSLINK main application.

• Reduced the number of calculations by redesigning the resolution of dependent formulas
• There is no limitation on the depth of dependent formula chaining. All dependent formulas will now be updated correctly on first click.
• Perfromance gains of between 25% and 60% depending on the structure and complexity of a given Excel workbook..

• When choosing a larger system font than the windows os default size, an overlap occured in the export dialog thus rendering the delete / save button invisible. This has been fixed.
• New "carry over" switches have been added to the transaction development export dialog. This is a shortcut as users no longer need to switch to the ooptions dialog to enable or disable that function on export.

• Reading group accountbalances returned wrong data when restricting the account for transaction development.
• Windows-Defender ATP-Edition issued threat warnings when XLSLINK created a temporary file in the Windows temp directory during startup. This file creation was interpreted by Windows Advanced Threat Protection as an attack and quarantined. As a workaround, users had to configure Windows ATP to ingore the tmep directory. Now the temporary file is created in a safe XLSLINK directory.
• Unpacking a whole Excel document would only just unpack the sheet, if password protection was used on that sheet.
• The choice dialogues for the parts of the new keys for consolidation functions did not display any data.

Unfortunately, while redesigning the update algorithms in release 21.0 we experienced an issue that during complex formula updates, Excel seemingly hangs - thus does not show a user visible sign of feedback, that calculations are indeed still proceeding in background. The calculations will eventually finish and show the correct results, but there is an amount of time a user might be worried and tempted to quit Excel in between. We are working a solution to reliably display update activity to the user and ship that in a following fixpack release.

We have implemented several technical improvements and bugfixes to improve stability and performance. Special care was taken to make Connector more resilient to false virus detection software warnings, such as Microsoft Bit Defender. We have changed the internal Excel Addin installation and signing process to prevent Microsoft Bit Defender from erroneously marking Connector on client PC's.

The read and write functions of IDL.CONNECTOR were no longer developed since Release 2016 and delivered for the last time with Release 2019 Update 1. From Release 2020 on no new versions are supplied. Running Excel worksheets may be continued to be used, however, there will be only limited support by IDL. Now only IDL.XLSLINK is supported for these purposes. Only IDL.XLSLINK can be used in connection with the 64 bit version of MS Excel (see documentation "Hardware and Software Requirements"). Please note particularly the current software requirements in www.idl.eu/service-center/software/software/hard-und-software-requirements when changing your MS Office or Excel versions.

If you have many and extensive Excel maps with IDL.CONNECTOR formulae the transition to IDL.XLSLINK may be a major project. In this case it is recommended to arrange support by an IDL consultant.