Crystal Xcelsius – Excel is busy…
If you’re a user of Business Objects Crystal Xcelsius and you’ve seen this message, you know my pain.
“Excel Is Busy Please Close Excel”
So I make sure Excel is closed. I even check the task manager to see if there are any hidden processes running. Good. Excel is NOT running. So I click OK.
And I’m greeted with this wonderful error message in Excel.
“Excel cannot open the file ‘im1.xlsx’ because the file format or file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file.”
By the way…I know of no file named im1.xlsx. This seems to be a random file generated each time I try to open my Xcelsius project. The number starts at 0 and increments by 1 with each try.
Before wasting your time with details, let me say that this is not an informational blog post. This is a plea for help. If anyone has solved this issue, or if someone from Business Objects would like to make a statement, please let me know. Post a comment, send an email, smoke signals, or whatever. This issue is all over the forums, and even another blog that doesn’t seem to have found an error.
Ok, so now a little background about my system:
– 1 month old HP Pavilion
– Windows Vista Home Premium
– 3GB RAM / 500 GB HD
Crystal Xcelsius Professional 4.5
Office 2007 Ultimate (with “Save as PDF/XPS” plug-in) Could that be it???
I run Avast! anti-virus
I’m also running Pidgin for my instant messaging needs.
I also have Visual Studio 2005 installed with .NET framework 2.0
Other than that, there’s nothing overly unique about my system.
I’ve tried everything I can think of, aside from an OS reinstall which I would really rather not do.
Do you have any ideas? If you have figured out the solution to this problem, I beg that you let me know.
I appreciate any comments, ideas, or suggestions.
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***2/17/2008 : Solution (One that worked for me.)***
In my research, I came across a blog that mentioned the personal.xls workbook in Excel that’s used to store macros. When Xcelsius tries to open an existing dashboard, it tries to load the Excel file behind the scenes. If you have a “personal workbook”, Excel decides to open that as well. In doing that, it confuses Xcelsius.
So the solution? Get rid of the personal workbook.
How?
The personal.xls, or possibly personal.xlsb, workbook is contained in a folder that is hidden for most users. Mine is in the location below.
C:\Users\Jason\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\
You should be able to find the file by searching Windows for personal.xls.
Since I would like to keep the macros I worked so hard to create, I just copied the file to another folder. To use the macros stored in personal.xls, you’ll have to move the workbook back to that folder before opening Excel. This is a fairly clunky solution, but at least I can use Xcelsius again!
Unfortunately, I’m a heavy user of Excel macros, so this isn’t the greatest solution for me. I haven’t found any other solutions that work, so I’m running with this one for now. However, I will continue the search for a better solution. Let me know if this solution works for you, or what other things you have tried.
This exact issue has happened to me on two occasions. I am still a big fan of 4.5. I found that it is related to inserting modern objects into the spreadsheet. My last issue was because I added an arrow (pointer) into the sheet as a note to myself. That was enough to cause this issue. Once it gets into your Xcelsius model and you save and close it, you’re toast. Unfortunately you (I) won’t know that it’s an issue until you open the Xcelsius file. Hours trying, I am unable to fix the problem but, after today, I know what causes it.