Copy/Paste in PAfE - Excel Not Responding

[Ajay]

Hi All

We are finding issues with PAfE (2.0.54) in that copying from one workbook to another results in an "Excel Not Responding" for a minute or so, whilst users are connected to our PA instances.

If the user disconnects, the copy/paste is instant.

Has anyone else come across this issue ?

Using PAfE 2.0.54 and MS Excel 2016

Thanks
Ajay

[gtonkin]

Got any of the dreaded volatile formulas on any open worksheets in any workbooks - Indirect, Offset etc?

[Ajay]

None.....I had a quick look for any but there weren't any.

Searched online for this but to no avail unfortunately.

It is strange. The user simply highlights a range of cells on the source spreadsheet, but it's the action of trying to paste on the target spreadsheet (before even right-clicking "paste") where it hangs before it completes.

I'm minded to log a call on this one

[gtonkin]

I found when testing a dynamic report that switching worksheets/workbooks seemed to trigger some kind of recalculate event and could take some time before you could type or paste into the dynamic report.

Have you tried turning calculation mode to Manual - does it do the same?
If you copy values from somewhere else on the sheet and then right-click to paste does it have the same lag?
Any hidden sheets that may have calculations or be linked to what is happening on your sheet?

[Ajay]

Yep, tried all three

Even checked in Name Manager to make sure nothing was being defined elsewhere and also checked conditional formatting rules too.

I'm going to try and recreate the source file as PAfE file as currently it was developed in Perspectives 10.2, and see if I get the same issue.

Ajay

[Ajay]

Update:
I've spent the day recreating the source workbook for the user, but I did it fully in PAfE and built it "clean", by this I mean removing volatile formulae, links, conditional formatting etc etc.

When I did this, the copy/paste from the new source, to the target workbook, was done in an instant.

This is casting doubt, in my mind, that the assertion that Perspectives built reports can come across to PAfE without "any" issues is false.

We now have a real issue that there are an unknown number of Perspectives workbooks in the user community which will come our way for fixing

Ajay

[Paul Segal]

If it's any consolation, we're just going through the same exercise, and 99 out 100 reports are OK - it tends to be the old and crufty ones that fall over in my experience. Having said that, you're correct they're not really the same animal - this is a useful bit from Qubit: https://blog.quebit.com/blog/quebit-blo ... evaluation

[Ajay]

Thanks for the link Paul, have you used the product to identify issues in your workbooks ?


I think that ours fall into the following buckets:

a) from excel 2007 days which have continued to be used
b) or very "dirty" (definition of which I describe earlier)
c) Excel binary Workbooks, eg xlb....whatever that is
d) and possibly stuff saved on document sharing portals

Regards
Ajay

[Paul Segal]

Hi Ajay,

I haven't used the Quebit tool, as we're on Cloud and last time I looked it wouldn't run on an automation user.

Regards

[Ajay]

Further update:

Got this link:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/apar/PH23436

Looks like this is an issue in versions of PAfE before 2.0.55 (we are on 2.0.54)

As a reachout to the forum, if anyone is on 2.0.55 or higher could they confirm that the speed of the copy/paste is near enough instant please ?

Appreciated
Ajay

[Paul Segal]

I'm on 5.6 and it seems fine. I'd recommend going to 5.6 or above - up to 5.5 there were also issues with the VBA calls.

[gtonkin]

If by "near enough instant" you mean 2 to 3 seconds then Yes, on 2.0.59.

My Dynamic Report is 53 rows x 37 columns, Automatic calc is on and Refresh data on writeback is set to None. Only the cell is updating, no C: level members

Still not my idea of Instant. I can see the value go in, see the RECALC_0_0 then see the value updated, as it updates - slow motion.
I am connected to a Cloud instance so this could account for some delay (173 ms ping)

Entering data into a cube view/exploration in PAW is almost instant though.