Xcelsius 2008 crash / drwatson when trying to preview... hacky solution.

Question

Been having a bit of a headache (more than usual) with the pain in the [arse/butt/fanny] we know and love as Xcelsius '08.
On a few of our XLF's, the files were opening perfectly, but when you click preview it either just simply died with a Xcelsius error (leaving a couple of excel.exes's in its wake) or Mr Watson makes an appearance and tries to do some debugging.  Either way the file is all but useless.
One simple(ish) workaround is to create a new blank XLF and export import your spreadsheet and copy/paste your components across from old to new.  This seems to do the trick - though itu2019s not quite as simple as youu2019d like as some components tend to forget colours on copy paste and images tend to screw up.  Also your layout is off set by ten or so pixels on each axis which is all rather annoying and time consuming.
A bit of hacking the XLF file has turned up the cause of the Bug.  It seems that if components are sourced from other files (again with copy paste action) they can become corrupt over time (no idea why!) and basically corrupt the XML structure of your XLF file in a really simple way - the change the components colour scheme to one that does not match the overall XLF file - this exception is handled in typical bad grace weu2019ve come to love in 2008 and it bombs out.
So if youu2019re feeling brave and want to get around the bug without recreating your work or copy/pasting as above here's the workaround...
Make a backup of your XLF. Please!
Rick click you .XLF and click Send To.
Select Winzip (browse for it if not a default).
Youu2019ll be presented with a list of files.  document.xml is the one we are interested in.
Youu2019ll also see a version of you XLS file (xldoc) and images youu2019ve put in image components and selected "embed".
Right click document.xml and select Edit with NOTEPAD.EXE (you may need to be patient here depending on number of components!)
What youre after is the <colorScheme> tag at the highest level of the XML structure.  Near the top for me   hereu2019s the first few lines from one of my filesu2026
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CXCanvas guid="511745753-25300-4573-188-201-412442191122451" width="1000" height="600"><component id="BOA7690C68EC7741B0956C3096FB1214E5" className="xcelsius.display.BackgroundComponent" styleName="background04Skin" displayName="Background 1"><colorScheme>BOF04E18CD488C482CA442FDFD0B286C59</colorScheme><properties>
Copy the long string between the <colorScheme> and </colorScheme> tags.  These are of course hex colour codes. 
Next do a find in your document for u201C</colourScheme>u201D check the string before it is the same as the first one you found.  Keep doing this all the way through the document.  If you find any that differ you probably have the same problem I had u2013 if not back to the drawing board u2013 sorry!
Any you find different change to the proper value.
When your done save and close notepad.
Then click in the winzip window u2013 it should say some thing like u201CFile C:\testcrap\document.xml has changed since it was last extracted. Update archive with this file?u201D
Say yes, and close the winzip.
Now open your XLF in Xcelsius and preview u2013 hopefully no more crash.
Hope thatu2019s of some useu2026 and remember, hacking XML is not at all part of the Xcelsius supported workflow u2013 but crappy parsers call for crappy hacks
Keep a backup,
Cheers,
Jez.
Jez Braker
LearnBI.co.uk
Edited by: Jez Braker on Sep 16, 2008 5:59 PM

Answer 1

Javier,
I would like to think the problem is with the machine as well, but it has ocurred on Windows XP and Windows Vista.
My Windows Vista is a brand new computer, with nothing but the OS (and whatever Toshiba has put in it), Office and Xcelsius.
Right now I am building a Virtual PC machine with only Windows 2K3 and Office 2K3 installed on it. I will download all the patches and all the updates from Microsoft for it, but nothing else. I will then install Xcelsius and see if the problem persists.
I have run Xcelsius logged as the admin and as a user and the problem happens regardles.
Do you think it could be with the free trial version of the software? What is the version of the MFC80U.DLL you use? My version is 8.0.50727.1833
I have been impressed with what the software can do, but I am not too impressed with the way the software works.