Can't open an Excel file on one of the Citrix Servers

[Martin Ryan]

One of my users is having issues where sometimes she can open an Excel document from TM1 and sometimes she cannot. The issue is not consistent. I have noticed that she has the problem when she is connected to the Citrix server A, but she does not have the problem when connected to server B.

When's she's connected to server A she can see the name of the file but instead of having an Excel icon it has a Turbo Integrator icon. She can't double click on it, if she does then it goes back to the Application folder in which the file exists.

When she's connected to server B the icon is normal and she can open it up without any problem.

I can't explain it. Is there some setting in the .ini file or something that might indicate whether a user is allowed to use Excel files? I can't think what might be different between the two Citrix servers that might be causing the problem.

EDIT: This could be co-incidence, but if I give her admin access or she logs in as me then she can see the file. Though I'm not 100% certain whether I tried those options on server A or server B, so it may be unrelated. I've given her admin access to the Application folder.

Martin

[Alan Kirk]

One of my users is having issues where sometimes she can open an Excel document from TM1 and sometimes she cannot. The issue is not consistent. I have noticed that she has the problem when she is connected to the Citrix server A, but she does not have the problem when connected to server B.

When's she's connected to server A she can see the name of the file but instead of having an Excel icon it has a Turbo Integrator icon. She can't double click on it, if she does then it goes back to the Application folder in which the file exists.

When she's connected to server B the icon is normal and she can open it up without any problem.

I can't explain it. Is there some setting in the .ini file or something that might indicate whether a user is allowed to use Excel files? I can't think what might be different between the two Citrix servers that might be causing the problem.

EDIT: This could be co-incidence, but if I give her admin access or she logs in as me then she can see the file. Though I'm not 100% certain whether I tried those options on server A or server B, so it may be unrelated. I've given her admin access to the Application folder.

Sounds more like the file type assignment to Excel is broken for her login. Under her login on the problem server, try right clicking on the workbook file (you can do this in either Windows Explorer or through File -> Open) and select Properties. On the General tab it should show "Opens With Microsoft Excel". If it doesn't, and it wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't, then click the [Change] button and re-assign .xls files to Excel.

[George Regateiro]

If it is an option, we have noticed that deleting the roaming profile clears up most of the strange issues that seem to be related to a specific user. Not the best solution, but it has worked when nothing else would.

[dubs]

can she open a non-tm1 excel file on the server or does she log straight into perspectives? sounds like the excel config on the server aint quite right but if you can access no problem then maybe its to do with her profile

I've watched some of my sheets behave very oddly when on citrix, very hard to work out what is going on

the .ini file should be global for that citrix box so you should be using the same .ini as her


random thoughts:

on 9.5 there is the capabilities cube but don't think it defines if you can access apps or not would have to check

one thing I've noticed is that the BLOB file that TM1 uses to link to an excel sheet doesn't always function well - have you tried saving the sheet back up to the server? may fix the blob (i don't think this is the issue but the BLOB don't work quite as well as they should)

[Martin Ryan]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I'll try them out when I can next get on her machine. I've given her a workaround so she's not so interested any more. Will let you know what turns out to be the solution.

[dubs]

what was your workaround?

[qml]

This seems to be a bug with some versions of TM1. Some of my users experience the same problem. And the reason that only some of them are getting it seems to be connected to... how they click. If they expand their application folders by quick double-clicking, they are more likely to see an excel file with the TI icon (and then obviously, it won't open). Conversely, if they use the + sign to expand the application folder tree, they don't get this error. Hope this helps.

[Martin Ryan]

what was your workaround?

I logged on as an administrator and opened the file, then saved it on her C:\. Could just as easily have saved it somewhere on the network.

This seems to be a bug with some versions of TM1. Some of my users experience the same problem. And the reason that only some of them are getting it seems to be connected to... how they click.

That's.... odd. I'll investigate that next time.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Martin

[Ajay]

We have had this happen before but we implemented a weekly reboot of our Citrix farm. Once a week on a Friday night we have a physical server reboot of all Citrix servers in the farm. NOTE in your farm there will be one server which defines the rest of the farm. Allow this one one to come up first before the others are restarted....usually 30mins is enough.

We also, every three months delete profiles to keep them as clean as possible. We're using REN printers to ensure printer choices are always picking up native ones installed on the users laptops, and also have a standard "Book1" template for all Citrix users which has the add-in included as well as all network drives the user has access too. This allows a profile deletion across the farm of user profiles without causing issues

[Martin Ryan]

This seems to be a bug with some versions of TM1. Some of my users experience the same problem. And the reason that only some of them are getting it seems to be connected to... how they click. If they expand their application folders by quick double-clicking, they are more likely to see an excel file with the TI icon (and then obviously, it won't open). Conversely, if they use the + sign to expand the application folder tree, they don't get this error. Hope this helps.

Knock me down with a feather. When you suggested that I thought you might have forgotten your pills that day. But that did indeed fix it.

I doubt I'm going going to get a Citrix farm restart as TM1's one of many apps running on it. But I might have some luck with deleting roaming profiles.