DDE - Dynamic Data Exchange

[Alex Rice]

On Friday, November 15, 2002, at 11:49  AM, Scott Rossi wrote:
> RR can do DDE using the old Externals Collection available on the 
> RunRev
> site, but my understanding is that DDE is to be phased out as of 
> WindowsXP.
> Maybe someone more knowledgeable about MS/Windows can elaborate.

In my project I need to write reports out in MS Word and MS Excel 
formats. Realbasic has a "MS Office Automation" plugin, but it was slow 
and buggy as $%^&. It was of the reasons I switched to Rev.

So I am currently putting VBA code to  write the reports in an Excel 
template file, and the VBA code runs when I copy the Excel file into 
place and launch it. It's a tedious way to do it and VBA code is really 
hard to get right when you have to deal with lots of different MS 
Office versions.

So, what is DDE and why is it being deprecated, and what is replacing 
it?

Does anyone have examples of how I can execute VBA code via DDE from 
Revolution?

Where is this "old" Externals Collection for Windows? I don't see it on 
runrev.com. OK is this it? http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/external.htm 
? I found it in the list archives. Maybe it should be added to the 
runrev.com site?

Many thanks in advance,

Alex Rice, Software Developer
Architectural Research Consultants, Inc.
alrice at swcp.com
alex_rice at arc.to