WebBrowser/Excel ActiveX (COM/OLE)

[topham]

I have been searching high, and low for a solution to this problem. I am very suprised I have seen no mention of it by
anyone.

I have placed Microsoft's WebBrowser control within an application, and, using that control have opened an Excel
spreadsheet. This works reasonably well and allows me to control, atleast somewhat, how much a user can do.

The spreadsheet is displayed for the user and is being used to allow them to import data into the database, while giving
them an oportunity to correct the data, and manipulate it as necessary before importing. All of this has been working
quite smoothly with only minor issues, except one.

The major problem I have been having has to do with refreshing the screen. When the control is simply being used to display an html document it experiences no problem refreshing, however, when the control is used to display and
interact with an Excel Spreadsheet it sometimes fails to redraw itself when it has become obscured. (A window appears
in front because it popped up, or the user has switched to another application, etc.).

Is there any sure fire way to get the window, specificly the control to refresh when it is visible again? In the mean time to do testing I have attached a button to the window which makes the control (WebBrowser) visible=false and then
immediatly visible=true. This has worked well, but is not acceptable once the application is deployed.

I am using Progress 8.3C, but have also experienced the same problem with 9.1A. As well the WebBrowser control
exhibits this behavior with 4.x and 5.x versions of Internet Explorer. Office 97 (Excel) was used in all cases. (Multiple
computers were used as well, same behaviour).


If you wish to duplicate this problem please try the following:

Drop a WebBrowser control, reasonably sized on a Progress Window, then run. Simply drag and drop a spreadsheet
onto the control. The control will then open the spreadsheet. Now, repeat as necessary, obscure the window.

Sequence of events:
When the window redraws the control (Spreadsheet) is drawn FIRST, then, Progress draws its Window and seems to
obscure the control when it draws the background (again, not always). The control then never seems to get a message
to correct the now corrupted screenspace.

I *think* this may relate the the optimizations Progress has taken by using the ERASEBKGRND message to paint the
screen, causing the WM_PAINT messages to never occur.

I am going to attempt to use the MsgBlster control I found elsewhere to trap the messages and force a repaint but I
would be *very* interested in an alternative solution.

 

[mpowell]

Sorry I havent got a reply to your question but I have been thinking of doing something similar (the same i think).
I want to have a window with the web browse ocx and open a template excel document inside it. I was wondering how to communicate with the excel spreadsheet once inside the web browse.
Any sample commands would be appreciated.

Regards

P.S Good look with solving your problem

 

[topham]

Less than optimum, but it works...

While I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a solution to this problem I have stumbled on a work-around.

(I'd prefer a better solution, but this works).

I've used the MsgBlst control (http://www.global-shared.com/api/paint.html) and trapped WM_ERASEBKGRND. During the PAINT routine I do a FRAME FRAME-A:MOVE-TO-TOP(). then, immediatly FRAME FRAME-A:MOVE-TO-BOTTOM().

With the FRAME-A sized to match the ActiveX control it can quickly obscure the window, and disapear, Forcing the ActiveX control to repaint. While there is a slight flicker caused by this it is not too pronounced and only occures when the window is repainted. (Possibly this could be optimized by determining if the ActiveX control will be redrawn, but I see no reason to go overboard with this solution at this time).

As for accessing the Excel object while it is in the WebBrowser control, do this:

chExcel = chCtrlFrame:WebBrowserocument:APPLICATION NO-ERROR.
IF VALID-HANDLE(chExcel) THEN DO:
MESSAGE chExcel:NAME VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX.
RELEASE OBJECT chExcel.
END.

If this works the message displayed will be Microsoft Excel.
(Obviously you will want some error checking since the control could display other object types as well.)

 

[Unregistered]

Hi,

I'm working on the integration of Excel (97) in our Progress applications and have created tab-delimited textfiles which I then convert to excel and display on a sreadsheet. I am interested to find out how you allowed the user to make changes to your spreadsheet which were then imported to your database.

thanks,
Tomas

 

[JonMeecham]

Hi,

If you have an Excel session inside a IE session inside a Progress window (I think thats what you mean), it is probably Progress not refreshing.

Try setting session:multitasking-interval = 1.


Cheers