XDI Files not updating TM1

[damientaylorcreata]

Hi Guys,

In order to update many of our dimensions we use the Perspectives XDI file update on the TM1 toolbar in Excel. This allows us to change and add elements and then click a button that saves it back to TM1.

This has been working fine over the past few years. However today I have attempted to make changes and save to our Sales office dimension and it is not saving. It does not prompt me or give me error. It basically just does nothing when I click the "Dimension Save" button.

I have tried the following:

- Closing down and reopening the spreadsheet
- Restarting Tm1 perspectives
- Restarting the entire TM1 server
- Recreating the XDI spreadsheet and only leaving one element
- Making changes to the dimension inside of TM1 to see if I can refresh the dimension

It is as if something is flagged inside of TM1 on this dimension, as I am able to edit all other dimensions, just not this one.

Any advice would be highly appreciated!

Thanks,
Damien

[Alan Kirk]

Hi Guys,

In order to update many of our dimensions we use the Perspectives XDI file update on the TM1 toolbar in Excel. This allows us to change and add elements and then click a button that saves it back to TM1.

This has been working fine over the past few years. However today I have attempted to make changes and save to our Sales office dimension and it is not saving. It does not prompt me or give me error. It basically just does nothing when I click the "Dimension Save" button.

I have tried the following:

- Closing down and reopening the spreadsheet
- Restarting Tm1 perspectives
- Restarting the entire TM1 server
- Recreating the XDI spreadsheet and only leaving one element
- Making changes to the dimension inside of TM1 to see if I can refresh the dimension

It is as if something is flagged inside of TM1 on this dimension, as I am able to edit all other dimensions, just not this one.

Do you have any attribute formulas on the .xdi? I have one dimension, just one, that the .xdi simply won't work with if it has anything but bare-bones element names and weightings. (It's a dim which has an unusually long name as well, not sure whether that has anything to do with it.)

[damientaylorcreata]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for you quick reply! To answer your question, no there are no attribute formulas. In fact there are not attributes specified. I basically recreated the XDI file and simply added one element as follows for testing purposes:

Cell E1 = "tm1serv:Sales Office"
Cell A3 = "N"
Cell B3 = "111"

Thats all I have in the entire spreadsheet.

Regards,
Damien

[tomok]

It is as if something is flagged inside of TM1 on this dimension, as I am able to edit all other dimensions, just not this one.

Make sure that the xdi file is located in the same folder as the other xdi's and that the folder is specified in the Data Directory setting in TM1 Options in Perspectives. If all that is OK then re-create the XDI by exporting the dimension, opening in Perspectives and saving with XDI extension. This always does the trick for me when I have a problem.

[damientaylorcreata]

Yes the files are certainly in the same directory and I have tried completely recreating the xdi file via Perspectives. However it still will not allow me to Save the dimension back to TM1. Actually it funny enough worked this morning for one save and then went back to the same issue again. So I at least got to save one lot of changes. However I now have more changes, and it is back to this crazy behavour again. I have tried restarting the TM1 server, etc all over again, but not letting me save. Its so strange!

[jorelb]

I think this is similar to what we experienced a few months back. Please refer to http://www.tm1forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3202

[damientaylorcreata]

unfortunately this is a different issue. The issue in that thread was the spreadsheet was loading either blank or in a strange format. However my spreadsheet loads perfectly normal and all cells in the spreadsheet are correctly formatted. The problem is that when I click the button to save to tm1 it doesn't do anything. It does not save data back to TM1, It doesn't even give me the warning prompt that usually asks me to confirm that I am about to override the current dimension. I can manually edit the dimension via TM1, but I just can't save from the spreadsheet.

Actually it is happing on two seperate dimensions now. I can save all dimensions via Excel, just not natural account or sales office. I have reproduced the spreadsheets and even simplified the sheets to only have one record, but not working.

Its very strange!

[Alan Kirk]

unfortunately this is a different issue. The issue in that thread was the spreadsheet was loading either blank or in a strange format. However my spreadsheet loads perfectly normal and all cells in the spreadsheet are correctly formatted. The problem is that when I click the button to save to tm1 it doesn't do anything. It does not save data back to TM1, It doesn't even give me the warning prompt that usually asks me to confirm that I am about to override the current dimension. I can manually edit the dimension via TM1, but I just can't save from the spreadsheet.

Actually it is happing on two seperate dimensions now. I can save all dimensions via Excel, just not natural account or sales office. I have reproduced the spreadsheets and even simplified the sheets to only have one record, but not working.

Its very strange!

Just out of curiosity, the affected .xdis were definitely saved in good 'ol traditional .xls format, not .xlsx from 2007 (or some other format for that matter)? (Note that I'm not just talking about the file extension here, which will obviously be .xdi regardless of the underlying format of the file. I'm talking about the format of the file itself.) I haven't really extensively tested .xdis in 2007 (if that is in fact what you're using in this case), but it occurs to me that it's something to look at.

[damientaylorcreata]

Thanks Alan. Funny thing is that I am using Excel 2003 and the format saved should have been xls. And when I did a save as the file name was showing "Account.xdi" and the save as type was "Microsoft Office Excel Workbook (*.xls)". So I thought that this doesn't explain it. However I thought I would just click save again anyway and it prompted me that this will override the file. However After doing this I decided to try pressing the save to tm1 button again (I mean what the heck) lo and behold it worked!!! So strange!

I had even recreated the file from scratch and had the same problem, but if I save by using "Save As" as opposed to "Save" it works!

So in summary it seems to be working now... thankyou so much for your help!!

[Martin Ryan]

I'm now experiencing a (virtually) identical problem. The only difference is that I get the dialog box asking me to confirm I want to overwrite the dimension.

- I make a change
- Go to TM1 -> Dimension Worksheets -> Save
- Yes, overwrite
- It almost immediately starts saving the Excel workbook back to the dimension, it's like it just skipped over the part where it updates the dimension - the dimension is pretty big, so the update should take few seconds.

I've tried Damien's solution of re-saving the workbook with no joy. I did manage to get it working on the dev server after recreating the xdi file, but I can't get it to work on the live server.

Any other ideas?

Excel version is 2003 SP3, TM1 is 9.5.1

[kpk]

Hi,

I suggest to try out the changes in the Dimension Editor... also. One by one.
It is usually a rule "ambigiuos element" issue.
Unfortunately only the Dimension Editor gives that information to you the Excel XDI simply does not save the dimension.

HTH,

Peter

[Martin Ryan]

Could be. In the end I updated the XDI file and the dimension - via the dimension editor - separately.

[kangkc]

something that I have tested for at least 3 sites. To manage through XDI, I need to make sure the local server directory is specified with a valid path. Only then I can save the XDI.
Again, I'm not sure this is the problem here but at least it works for me.

[Don]

Thanks Alan. Funny thing is that I am using Excel 2003 and the format saved should have been xls. And when I did a save as the file name was showing "Account.xdi" and the save as type was "Microsoft Office Excel Workbook (*.xls)". So I thought that this doesn't explain it. However I thought I would just click save again anyway and it prompted me that this will override the file. However After doing this I decided to try pressing the save to tm1 button again (I mean what the heck) lo and behold it worked!!! So strange!

I had even recreated the file from scratch and had the same problem, but if I save by using "Save As" as opposed to "Save" it works!

So in summary it seems to be working now... thankyou so much for your help!!

Hi,
I got the exact problem yesterday, it was even worse as TM1 was crashed every time when I’ve updated and saved the xdi worksheet and required to restart the server. After trying few things as what you’ve done at the very beginning and it didn’t work, so I got a TM1 consultant to come to my office to fix it. He said he never has seen this problem before and the quick get around is to export the dimension as a cma file and re-create the xdi worksheet again. It was working yesterday until this morning when I have opened the xdi worksheet again. I made several changes on the worksheet, save it but it didn’t prompt to ask if I want to override the file and of course the dimension wasn’t updated. I was thinking to call the consultant again but end up I decided to google this first and then I saw your post. I followed what you did, select Save As and what I saw from the Save as Type was “Unicode Text(*.txt). I changed it to Microsoft Office Excel Workbook (*.xls) then saved it. After that, I went to the TM1 toolbar – Dimension Worksheets-Save, it prompted the question this time, I saved it and it works fine now. Thanks!

[mnasra]

Hi,

I created a dimension and worked on it for more than a week- Left it alone, and came back to it a month later.
I cannot save it anymore- The description of my problem is exactly what you have in this thread- the BIG difference is that I have created the dim in dim editor and never used any XDI for it.
So I cannot use your solution because I do not have a worksheet for that dimension.
PS: I can add new items and it saves them, but I cannot change their order- Click on the save, nothing happens not even an error message.

Any idea??

thanks
micheline

[Martin Ryan]

There's a button for establishing the order if you've made manual movements. It has three little ticks on this. Click this before saving your dimension.

You can also right click on the dimension and there's a setting there (properties? I can't remember at the moment) for automatically sorting it via hierarchy.

Martin

[mnasra]

Thanks Martin but unfortunately it is not that simple. I know about the button and the save- The problem is that I click on them (as usual) and no message, nothing happens. This is why I said it looked exactly like the problem mentioned here, with the difference that I never used the XDI file

micheline

[Martin Ryan]

That's a pretty big difference. It's a completely different interface.

If the three little ticks button doesn't work then this is a bug. You should raise with IBM.

Martin

[mnasra]

Thanks Martin- Yes, I will report it to IBM. In the meantime, I 'resolved' my problem by creating a new blank server, I replicated my 'corrupted' one- The new server does not have the issue-

micheline

[ioscat]

Just solved similar problem as topic starter discribed. Our reason was disconnection between Excel and Server. Maybe this post will help smb.