Rapid Application Development / Advanced Excel Development

Excel xll SDK Install

Whilst the xll features of Excel offer excellent functionality and superb performance, they are not for the faint hearted. Excel/VBA developers especially have trouble deciphering the documentation. Add in the need to use a different development environment and language and its easy to see why this powerful option is often rejected.

Xll Series Contents

(note this is a work in progress - more pages will be added and linked too as and when we have time to complete them to an acceptable level)

• Series intro
• Brief introduction to xlls - what, why, etc.
• The Codematic xll base project
• Installing Visual Studio C++ 2008 Express.
• Installing the Excel Xll SDK for use with Visual Studio 2008 (C++ Express) (this page)
• Very brief overview of C and C++ editors (VS2008)
• Creating a simple dll
• Debugging xlls
• Introduction to XLM.
• Using CALL to access external dll functions from XLM
• Registering dll functions for use from a worksheet cell - using XLM and VBA
• The XLOPER data type and xlcall.h
• The Excel4() function and xlcall.h
• Converting a dll to xll by adding in the registration information
• The Microsoft xll Software Development Kit and framework.
• The Codematic custom xll development service

Installing the Excel Xll SDK for use with Visual Studio 2008 (C++ Express) (This page)

XLL SDK install instructions

Install VS2008 express

Download the Excel 2007 XLL SDK from MSDN (Use your favourite search engine as the location is not static)
Install Excel 2007 XLL SDK (anywhere) (run Excel2007XLLSDK.EXE and choose the install location)

Copy xlcall.h from the SDK \ include folder to the \include folder within Visual Studio
Copy xlcall32.lib from the SDK \ lib folder to the \lib folders within Visual Studio

Source:

The include path is
VSinstall\ VC\include
(Eg: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include)

The lib path is
VSinstall\ VC\lib
(Eg: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\lib)

Destination (include)

Destination (lib):

Alternatively you can add settings to Visual Studio to find them in any location of your choice.

The SDK also includes some useful wrapper functions to make working with the C API slightly less painful. These are Framewrk.c and its header Framewrk.h (note the spelling). To make them easy to include in many different projects copy these two files from the SDK folder to the Visual studio \include folder too .

You can then use
#include "FRAMEWRK.H"
#include "FRAMEWRK.C"

Instead of the more laborious and fragile

#include "C:\2007 Office System Developer Resources\Excel2007XLLSDK\samples\framewrk\FRAMEWRK.H"

This approach also works with the Codematic xll wrapper generator.

The Codematic xll demo uses these framewrk files, the current version includes them in the xll project folder.This is fine for occasional use. If you will be writing lots of xlls follow the above approach to put them in the include folder.

If you require any more information please get in touch.