Dimension Worksheet Gremlin

[jorelb]

I built and have been maintaining the account dimension in our forecast model for 1.5 years using a dimension worksheet. All was well until yesterday, when I was trying to open the dimension worksheet in the production server the worksheet appeared to open but returned a blank excel screen (no new worksheet with lines and cells – a totally blank excel like when I clicked on the TM1p icon). It appeared to be opening normally, a dialogue box opens with “The file you are trying to open, ‘Account.xdi’, is in a different format…’, I click on ‘Yes’, the status bar at the bottom right of excel shows ‘Opening Account.xdi’, then the tabs of the dimension worksheet flashes and disappears. What is strange is that I am able to open the same dimension worksheet (Account.xdi) from my laptop and development box through the ‘Dimension Open’ icon (Data Directory is defaulted to the location of the forecast model) and modify the dimension. Also, all other dimension worksheets work in all three - production, development, and my laptop. I restarted the production box, repaired excel, modified and saved the worksheet using my laptop and the file would still not open up in the production server.

Our system setup: Windows x64, TM1 9.4.1 MR1 & Excel 2007 SP 2.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,

[Olivier]

Are you sure the file extension is ".xdi" precisely ?

There is another extension for recovery file generated automaticaly,
i don't remember the details of it (xid, idx...) but that might be what the issue is ?

Unfortunatly, all i remember is beeing confused by something similar in the past...

Hope this helps,

Olivier

[jorelb]

I came across a dimension error Technote (1041500) in the IBM website and, although not remotely similar to what I was experiencing, I decided to apply the recommended solution and it worked.

The fix:
1. Recreate the dimension in another TM1 server. Copied the data from my old dimension worksheet and pasted as values in the new worksheet. I pasted as values to insure that none of the corrupted code will be copied over to the new sheet.
2. Stopped the TM1 application server that had the corrupted worksheet.
3. Copied the new xdi and dim file from the other server and pasted the new files in the TM1 application server and replaced the old dim and xdi files.
4. After the TM1 application server restarted, I opened the dimension worksheet and saved. I made several dimension changes to confirm that the procedure worked.