OWC 2003 Software Update?

[Josh Sale]

It looks like MS updated OWC 2003 on November 9th. Check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...mg_id=10050&displaylang=en#QuickInfoContainer

Anybody have any idea what's changed?

josh

 

[Chuck Heatherly]

It looks like MS updated OWC 2003 on November 9th. Check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...mg_id=10050&displaylang=en#QuickInfoContainer

Anybody have any idea what's changed?

I'd also like to hear officially if the components have changed, but
this might be part of the reason for the separate download:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Offic...e303-4d7d-93eb-3584c358d1c91033.mspx?mfr=true

Click the link near the end titled "Changes in the 2007 Office
System".

<quote>

OWC11

Description: OWC11 is removed from the 2007 Office release and now
ships only with Microsoft Office Project 2007. The DataFinder
functionality in OWC11 is also removed. This affects solutions that
use the spreadsheet, chart, pivot table, and data source control
functionality of OWC11 in a Web page or client program that requires
installation of this ActiveX control on the user's computer. The user
experience varies depending upon the host container of the OWC11
ActiveX control.

For Web pages, users might see a broken icon or a notification that
OWC is required. For client programs, users might receive a runtime
error or other notification. In these situations, users download OWC11
from the Microsoft Download Center. The notification message generated
by Office programs provides a link to the download location for OWC11.
Neither Microsoft Office Excel 2007 nor SharePoint Designer 2007 now
generate Web pages that use OWC.

Reason for change: New technologies such as Microsoft Windows
SharePoint Services 3.0 with Excel server side capabilities and the
new charting component in the 2007 Office release replace some
features of OWC11.

</quote>

Actually, that last part is misleading, because the Excel Services
components only come with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Enterprise Edition ($$$), not WSS 3.0 (free).

Chuck

 

[Josh Sale]

Chuck,

Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that.

I'm not sure what universe MS is living in when they describe Excel Services
as being comparable to OWC!

josh

 

[Alvin Bruney [MVP]]

I'm not sure you can get anyone in the know at MS to make that claim. The
two technologies are worlds apart. I'm diving into this fairly deeply now
for my upcoming book and I can tell you that there needs to be a strategy
going forward to provide users with the functionality that OWC provides. In
fact, I've heard it rumored that there is a certain 3rd party control that
may be a replacement for the OWC. We'll see how this pans out.

 

[Josh Sale]

If you know who the 3rd party is, please feel free to have them contact me.
We almost certainly would be willing to pay for such a product and might
even be willing to help fund its development depending on its functionality.

josh

 

[Josh Sale]

Alvin,

Back to my original posting on this thread, do you know what's been changed
in the updated version of OWC11 that MS has put on their web site?

j

 

[Alvin Bruney [MVP]]

No, I don't. If it is business critical for you, I can put a request in to
find out what has changed. There's no guarantee on the timeline for the
response though - things move kinda sluggish where OWC is concerned.

 

[Josh Sale]

Business critical ... I'm thinking about that.

I have a shipping product that uses OWC. I understand and have worked
around the many OWC problems that are relevent to me. I'm trying to evalute
what has changed in the new updated download to see if I should install it?
It seems like the MS knowledgebase or something ought to indicate what's
changed or fixed with this update.

Bottom line: Yes, if its not too much trouble I would like to know what's
different.

Thanks,

josh

 

[Alvin Bruney [MVP]]

Here is the official word from Microsoft.

In general users should not see any functionality differences between the
version online prior to November 9th and the
current version. The only real difference between these versions is that
the current version is built using the Office 12 build process and the old
version was built using the old Office 11 build process. (Since the
owc11.exe shipped with Project Server 2007 we updated the bits to use the
new build process). The change in the build process may result in slightly
different setup UI but should not change any of the OWC functionality. No
new functionality was added to the most recent version (release on Nov.
9th).

The current owc11.exe bits online should contain the same GUIDs as they did
previously. If users are seeing different GUIDs I ask that they provide
back additional details about the GUIDs they are seeing so we can
investigate, but as far as the OWC team is aware these GUIDs should be the
same.

Hope that helps.

--
Regards,
Alvin Bruney
------------------------------------------------------
Shameless author plug
Excel Services for .NET is coming...
OWC Black book on Amazon and
www.lulu.com/owc

 

[Josh Sale]

Thank you Alvin.

Happy holidays.

josh