CitectSCADA provides the Citect Tags
Excel macros, which permit you to display the value of CitectSCADA variables directly in an
Excel worksheet cell (so that you do not need to use Cicode DDE
functions). The macros are contained in a workbook named
ddeformu.xls
(in the \CitectSCADA 7.10\bin
directory), which was
updated to support Network DDE with product version 5.41 and later.
Note: Microsoft Excel version 8 which
shipped with Microsoft Office 97 provides macro virus protection to
minimize the likelihood of potentially malicious macros from
running. To enable macros, and be able to use the features provided
with ddeformu.xls
, in Excel 8, from
the main menu, choose Tools | Options and on
the General tab clear the Macro Virus
Protection option.
Microsoft Excel version 9, which shipped with
Microsoft Office 2000, provides security levels which silently
disables macros by default. To enable macros, and be able to use
the features provided with ddeformu.xls
, in Excel 9 or later, from the
main menu, select Tools | Macro | Security and select
Medium or Low.
If your Excel security settings are enabled, when
you attempt to open the ddeformu.xls
, Excel informs you that the file
contains macros. To enable the Citect Tags features, select
Enable Macros.
When started, the Citect Tags macros expect that
CitectSCADA runtime is
operating on the same machine. If not, Excel displays a dialog
requesting permission to start citect.exe
(which may not succeed as
citect.exe
does not exist unless
you're running Citect version 3 or earlier). If you further select
Yes, it will search the system 'path' for the
non-existent program and subsequently report that the application
could not be found. If you select No, and if
previous values were saved with the worksheet, those are the values
that will display initially, and be replaced with '#REF!' when
updated. In any case, no valid values will be displayed in the
example worksheets until CitectSCADA runtime is started and
Excel is subsequently refreshed or restarted.
The Citect Tags macros expect the citect.ini
to exist in the config
folder of the CitectSCADAv7.20
User and Data folder selected
during installation. If the file is not found in the location, it
will not search elsewhere and will instead display the 'ERROR
Reading Citect.INI' dialog requesting the proper location. Enter
the full path including the file name, and clear Restore Defaults on Start Up to prevent the same thing
happening next time the macro is started. If you are using an
alternative INI file, enter it instead.
Once running, the right-click menu in Excel
contains four additional menu items, permitting you to perform two
new workbook related commands, and two new CitectSCADA-related commands to the
cell beneath the mouse pointer location when you perform the
right-click event. The new menu items provided with ddeformu.xls
are:
Note: This feature is only compatible with Excel version 5.00 (or later).