Report Generation Toolkit Makes Excel Flash Annoyingly

[Gregory]

When I use the report generation toolkit, I insert some graphs of my data into the report. If I start with the Excel window "normal" then the user can see each piece of data as it is put into Excel. If I start with the the Excel window "minimized" then they see the excel application opening and then minimizing back to the task bar repeatedly.

Is there a way to generate the whole report without the user seeing things being added to the report? I just want them to see the "end product" report.

[James.M]

"No Change" instead of Normal should do what you want.

[Gregory]

I tried that, but it still gives a bit of motion sickness. The attached VIs were written with LabVIEW 2014, and should display the issue I am talking about. Run the "Test Report.vi".

[ogk.nz]

From my experience selecting the Minimized option they window should stay minimized until told otherwise by the user or program. From the sounds of it you have a loop that is changing the state back and forth between minimised and normal. If you move your report open outside of the loop it should resolve your problem.

[James.M]

Ah yes... I think this is just the nature of the beast in terms of using ActiveX to control another program. That program does the animations and such that it would normally do when the actions are performed. This is why ad-ons like XLR8 are nice because they understand the file structure without needing the normal program. Unfortunately XLR8 has its own limitations to functionality.

[James.M]

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@ogk.nz wrote:

From the sounds of it you have a loop that is changing the state back and forth between minimised and normal. If you move your report open outside of the loop it should resolve your problem.

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He's not opening the report over and over, it's just operations in series:

[ogk.nz]

Then I'm quite confused unless it is specifically the generate graph function that is causing the window to flicker in and out becase using the below code I can run and have the window not appear until the very end program completion. Have you tried narrowing it down to what exactly is generating the flickering? From your phrasing it sounds like you suspect the entire report generation toolkit but that does not seem to be the issue. What version of excel are you exporting to?

[aputman]

Make sure Excel is not running when you execute the code.  Otherwise it will grab the active session and then change it to be "Minimized" or "No Change" based on your selection.  If it is closed and you select "No Change", you have to explicity open it, otherwise you will have a bunch of instances of Excel running but no windows to view. 

[Gregory]

I'm using Excel 2010. It looks like it's my insert graph function that causes Excel to pop up.

[Gregory]

If I open "Excel Insert Graph.vi" and then open "Excel_Insert_Chart.vi" I see that it checks at the beginning if the window state is "xlMinimized". If it is, then it sets it back to minimized at the end. So, I'm inclined to agree with James that this is expected behavior of using ActiveX to insert an OLEObject.