Does TM1 10.2.2 support Excel 2016 ?

[VPKR]

Hi All
We got an enquiry from Customer asking whether the current TM1 version will support Excel 2016. The answer is "NO" from IBM. We may have to wait.
Just posting this info, thinking that it will be useful for someone else.

Thanks,
Pavan

[Wim Gielis]

See: http://www-969.ibm.com/software/reports ... C59742B3EB

but then for 10.2.2.4.

[VPKR]

Yep.. We received the same link from IBM

[Wim Gielis]

Yep.. We received the same link from IBM

That's just a Google search on "TM1 supported environments"

[VPKR]

Wim... Do you really think there is nothing going beyond the piece of info provided by IBM?

[Alan Kirk]

Wim... Do you really think there is nothing going beyond the piece of info provided by IBM?

Well, I can tell you that I'm using 10.2.2 with Excel 2016 in a test environment... and that one would need to have rocks in their head to rely on that fact to deploy it to a production environment. It's a pretty binary thing:
Does IBM state that they will support Excel 2016?
Yes: You will have support from IBM if something goes wrong.
No: You won't have support from IBM if something goes wrong.

In view of that it really doesn't matter what anyone other than IBM says, including me. The link from Wim (which, incidentally, is also right up near the top of the FAQ) is the only one that counts.

This isn't wholly unreasonable on IBM's part since they need to test the thing before they can support it. And presumably they would want to test it better than Microsoft did before they released it. Excel 2016's most egregious issue is that when you launch an attachment (most commonly one of the older file formats) then unless you've disabled the trust centre settings, this happens:
Excel 2016 (same for Word, incidentally): "Ooooohhh, there could be scary monsters here! I've put this into protected mode for your safety and sekuriteeeee."
Me: "Just enable the damn thing so that I can work with it! I wouldn't have opened it if I didn't know what it was!"
Windows: "Excel 2016 Has! Stopped! Working! Pretending to search for a solution that I never actually find."

There's a bunch of people on the Microsoft forums reporting the same thing. One would have thought that it was a basic enough piece of functionality to test before release but apparently the Microsoft Office team thought otherwise.

So no, I would not recommending trusting Excel 2016 for operational use at this stage and it may be why IBM isn't yet supporting it. Maybe when it has one or two service packs under its belt.

[VPKR]

Hi Alan... as usual to your other posts, this is very informative and helps to stay away from Excel 2016 for now .. Thanks much.

[Bakkone]

Did anyone get CAFE to work with Excel 2016 32-bit?

I tried to get it working with Excel 2016 64-bit but that didn't go to well. Perspectives seems to work fine. But I would really want the users to start using CAFE instead.

[dsproffitt]

Due to the way Excel uses .Net 4.5 currently CAfE doesnt work well with 2016 .. its on the roadmap .. but last junction on the Chris Rea album

[Xavier 13]

Currently testing but it looks like Perspectives works with 10.2.2 FP6 in Excel 2016

[dharav]

@xavier 13:

Have you tested in FP5?

I have 10.2.2 FP5 and perspective works good except the rebuild current book option behavior.

In Excel 2010, If i click on Rebuild Current Book option than it recalculates data in one sheet and move to different sheet and we can see that. At the end, it stops on the last sheet in the work-book so we come to know that data has been recalculated. In 2016, Data will recalculate but we are not able to know whether it has calculated all data or not or currently which sheet is being updated.

If you have FP6 than could you please test same scenario:

=> Open your workbook having multiple sheet which retrieves the data from TM1
=> Hit Rebuild Current Book Option
=> See whether you can see data calculated for a specific sheet and moved to next sheet for calculation.

Please feel free if you require further information.

Thank You

Dharav

[jcr55]

I just received an email from our IBM Account Manager that IBM has released Excel 2016 support with TM1 10.2.2 FP6.
The IBM support web page with the product compatibility report has not been updated yet, but I am sure it will be.

[Andy Key]

Product Compatibility Report looks fine to me.

This being an IBM website, to find the Excel 2016 compatibility you need to look at Note 4 in the Office section rather than look at all the other Excel versions listed under the Excel section.

[jcr55]

Product Compatibility Report looks fine to me.

This being an IBM website, to find the Excel 2016 compatibility you need to look at Note 4 in the Office section rather than look at all the other Excel versions listed under the Excel section.

OK - thank you. Yes, I see the Microsoft Office note 4 now.

[blackhawk]

From my experience, TM1 10.2.2 Perspectives seems to run fine in 2016. You get the usual occasional crashes and odd behavior sometimes on views as dimensions are updated, etc.

However, what DOES NOT work, is Cafe. Cafe will not start if it doesn't recognize the version of excel and it seems that 2016 is one of those versions it complains about.

So if you are using excel sheets and Perspectives only, you are probably fine for the most part. Most of the support engineers at IBM are pretty good about helping you with getting things running in a future environment (i.e. 2016) because they recognize that they can gather all the bugs and get them addressed before the official supported release comes out. If you tried to go back to Window 95 or Lotus 123, well, that is entirely a different story.

The caveat to all of this is that IBM is really pushing hard to get people to go to Cafe and that cannot happen until they get 2016 supported because Mircrosoft is really pushing 2016 (I have to keep closing "Wanna upgrade to 2016?") bar. Which is just as annoying as the paper-clip dude was.

It is going to be interesting to see in the coming years as software becomes more and more pushed out with continuous updates, how companies and vendors deal with interoperability. Not just IBM, but others as well.

News Flash: Fireworks will begin at 9:00pm. Don't miss 'em. Sit right down here and get your front row seat!