Removing Space-Wasting TM1 Toolbars in Excel

Ideas and tips for enhancing your TM1 application
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Alan Kirk
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Removing Space-Wasting TM1 Toolbars in Excel

Post by Alan Kirk »

With special reference to the TM1 Servers one.

Even as late as 9.5.2, the options in the Excel client are a dog's breakfast. A handful of Server Explorer's can be regulated by toolbar settings. Most of them are buried in a Windows 3.1 vintage .ini file. The thought of providing a (full) Options form which gives the user the ability to easily toggle all settings has yet to hit the event horizon of Iboglix's consciousness.

The toolbars that are loaded into Excel are a special case, however. They are not set in the .ini file. You can go to the Excel Customize option and try to delete them, but the next time you re-start Excel, they'll be back again.

I find the "TM1 Servers" one to be particularly irritating since if there's a crash in VBA (from any code that you're running) it loses an object reference. Every time you log in or out of a server for the rest of that session, you get an unhandled VBA error from TM1 trying to set the pretty little red and green lights on that toolbar. It also takes up screen real estate without IMHO, a corresponding return in functionality. So how do you get rid of it?

For some reason Iboglix decided to bring toolbars into the post-Windows 95 world; rather than storing the toolbar options in the .ini file, they are stored in the Registry. Exactly where will vary between TM1 and/or Windows version. In 9.0 under Windows XP, for instance, it's in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Applix\TM1 Perspectives. With 9.5.2 under Windows 7 it's in HKEY_USERS. You therefore need to do a search.

The usual caveats apply; don't modify the Registry unless you know what you're doing, and this assumes that you have permissions to modify it (which you probably do or your computer wouldn't run properly).

1/ Start the RegEdit application. (You can do this via Start -> Run and type RegEdit [Enter] in the command line.) This launches the Registry Editor.
2/ Select the "Computer" item at the top of the tree of the Registry Editor. Go to the Edit menu and select Find, or press [Ctrl]+[F]. Type in DisplayServersToolbar and search for it.
3/ When you find it, right click on it and select Modify. Change the Value Data field from True to False.
4/ Do the same with any other toolbars that you don't want appearing.

That won't get rid of the toolbar in the current session but it won't be there the next time you start. (More precisely, it will be hidden; you can turn it back on via the Customize option in Excel. Still, starting hidden seems to be enough to prevent the TM1 Servers droolbar (sic) from generating a VBA error if an unhandled error occurs in the Visual Basic environment.)
"To them, equipment failure is terrifying. To me, it’s 'Tuesday.' "
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