Excel link is not installed

Product:

IBM Cognos Controller 10.1.1

Windows 2008 / 2003 Citrix server

Symptom:

After upgrade to new version of Cognos Controller the Excel link does not work.

Error message:

Excel link is not installed – when you press excel icon in Cognos controller client.

‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Cognos\ccr\ControllerXL.xll’ not found – when you start Excel on Citrix server.

 

Cause:

The Path to the controllerxl.xll file has change between the versions of Cognos Controller from

‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Cognos\ccr\ControllerXL.xll’ to ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\IBM Cognos Controller\ControllerXL.xll’

During uninstall of the Cognos Controller Client, this regvalue  for Excel stored in the users Windows profile is not updated, so next time Cognos Controller believes it is installed and therefore does not update the value.

 

Possible Solution:

If you do not want to erase the users windows profile on the citrix server you can create a script that update the users registry at start of the Cognos Controller program.

Create two files, and place them on the citrix servers c:\ drive. Ensure the users can read this files from the drive with NTFS security. Publish then the CMD file in Citrix management instead of the CCR.EXE file.

 

Create a reg file with below contents, name it excelchange.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options]

“OPEN”=”\”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\IBM\\IBM Cognos Controller\\ControllerXL.xll\””

 

Create a cmd file with below contents, name it startcognos.cmd

regedit.exe /s c:\excelchange.reg

C:\Progra~2\ibm\IBMcog~1\ccr.exe

Exit

The cmd file will call the reg file and import the values into the users HKEY_CURRENT_USER and then there after start the Cognos Controller client program.

 

Drawback is that the DOS windows is always visible for the Cognos Controller user in the background.

Maybe you have a solution to hide it on the citrix server with the command ctxhide.exe?

http://citrix-xenapp.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-is-ctxhide.html