PRB: RTD Servers Used with Embedded Excel Workbooks May Be Problematic

You may experience a number of problems when you host an Excel workbook that contains RealTimeData (RTD) formulas in an OLE or ActiveX Document Container such as Microsoft Internet Explorer. These problems may include the following:

• Performance of both Excel and the container application diminishes.
• You see focus problems when a new RTD formula is entered in the workbook.
• Excel, the container application, or both fail or data is lost when the container application is closed while the RTD server is updating data.
• Requesting new data from the RTD server by running the following:

  Application.RTD.RefreshData

  in the Immediate window does not cause new data to be displayed in the worksheet.

RTD servers require Excel to continue to work and recalculate much more than traditional spreadsheet data. Some of this work involves internal messages and focus changes that are handled easily when Excel is running in stand-alone mode, but can cause unexpected behavior when Excel is embedded in a container.

Because of these issues, using RTD servers in an Excel workbook that is embedded in an OLE or ActiveX Document Container such as Internet Explorer is not recommended.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Create an empty Excel workbook and save it to a convenient location.
2. Start Internet Explorer and browse to the Excel workbook that you created.
3. Select a cell, and type a properly formatted RTD formula. Note that the RTD formula begins to update, but no other cells can be edited. To resolve the focus problem, switch to another application or the desktop and then switch back to Internet Explorer.
4. Fill more than 500 cells with unique RTD formulas. Note that RTD performance seriously diminishes compared to when Excel runs in stand-alone mode. In moderate to extreme situations, Internet Explorer may fail to repaint.
5. Close Internet Explorer. When Excel asks whether you wish to save the workbook, click Yes. Excel and Internet Explorer both shut down. One or both applications may stop responding while they shut down.
6. With Excel running in stand-alone mode, open the workbook. Note that the changes that were made while the workbook was open in Internet Explorer were not saved.

For additional information about RTD servers, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: