From news.eecs.umich.edu!not-for-mail Sun Nov 28 17:10:14 1999
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From: Eric Durant <edurant@umich.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: How to open a new sheet in Excel using DDE?
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:14:27 -0500
Organization: University of Michigan EECS
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To: Bruce Lee <spamhole@spam.net>
Xref: news.eecs.umich.edu comp.soft-sys.matlab:61720

Bruce Lee wrote:
>I'm trying to use Matlab's DDE commands to open a new worksheet in
>Excel (97).  From the Matlab documentation, it looks like it can be
>done by opening Excel with the default 'Book1' file and doing the
>following:
>
>  c = ddeinit('Excel', 'Book1')
>  ddeexec(c, '[Sheets.Add]')
>  ddeexec(c, '[ActiveSheet.Name = "matlab sheet"]')
>
>The link opens OK and I get a value for c but the two ddeexec
>commands fail.  Any ideas anyone?  Is there any information about
>Excel DDE on the web somewhere?

The information available seems very sparse.  The Matlab help
headers seem to provide good information, but they are far from
complete.  I searched through my MSDN CDs and couldn't find
a useful listing of commands that Excel accepts via DDE.  For
anything besides the basics, I use a kludge -- I write the
function in an Excel macro and then use DDE to execute the
macro.  It's ugly, but it works.  The Matlab syntax is:

retval = ddeexec(channel, '[run("MacroName")]');

Also, the DDE links are fragile.  To make the code acceptably
robust, you might need some exception handling like:

=============================
% Precondition: 'channel' has been initialized as a
% DDE link to the Excel spreadsheet named in 'filename'.

success = 0;
retry = 0;
while (~success),
   try
      % This block will be restarted if there is an error,
      % so we need to keep track of where we are (increment
      % a counter after each successful operation, etc.).

      % DDE commands here

      success = 1;
   catch
      retry = retry + 1;
      if retry > retry_limit,
         error('Too many DDE retries. terminating...');
      end
      retval = ddeterm(channel);
      channel = ddeinit('excel', filename);
   end
end
=============================

-- Eric Durant
   http://www.edurant.com/