Ventuz Forum

Hi Ventuz community. We use Excel as a data source to the Excel workbook node for a lot of settings in our projects - pretty typical usage. I've noticed a behaviour that I don't understand. When I open an Excel workbook using Microsoft Excel and edit a cell that is bound into a Ventuz node and save the workbook, the change reflects instantly in Ventuz. This is great, and makes managing configuration really easy.

But - I can open the same workbook in Open Office/Libre Office Calc, edit the same cell and save the workbook - but Ventuz does not see the change. Closing the workbook doesn't cause Ventuz to change either. I have to restart the scene.

I'd like to try and understand why - I'm sure the Ventuz programmers must have an insight? If it's possible to recreate the same behaviour in Open Office Calc, I could completely eliminate the need for Excel or Microsoft Office licences completely within my business - saving me a significant amount of money each year!

It'd be great to hear from the Ventuz team on this one - even if it's just to help understand how and why this behaviour works.

Craig

Hi Craig!

We do not use any MS Office specific functionality to get informed about the file update.
We only rely on the notifications of the NTFS file system. It's the same for all resource loader nodes with the Auto-Update flag.
I guess that Open Office has a special way of serialization which does not trigger the events on which Ventuz is listening.

Best Regards
Karol

Hey Karol, thanks for the quick reply!

That's good to know - I couldn't understand why editing files in Open Office caused different behaviour, but that makes sense. At least now I know where my investigation leads me next. If I find something in the Open Office/Libre Office Calc configuration that forces Calc to emulate Excel more closely when it serialises to file, I'll report back on this thread.

Thanks for your help.
Craig

Hi there,

I had some issue using .xlsx files saved via open office... It did not worked in Ventuz, I had to re-open the file with Microsoft Excell and resave it... And Tadam!