search

OfficeDev / office-js

A repo and NPM package for Office.js, corresponding to a copy of what gets published to the official "evergreen" Office.js CDN, at https://appsforoffice.microsoft.com/lib/1/hosted/office.js.
https://learn.microsoft.com/javascript/api/overview
Other
668 stars 95 forks source link

Custom Functions are not working at all when Excel area is used in PPT/Word with paste as link functionality #3350

Open 4tti opened 1 year ago

4tti commented 1 year ago

Provide required information needed to triage your issue

Our customers are expecting that normal office functionality to 'Paste as link' should work even with Custom Functions. Typical scenario is to prepare Excel report and then take part of it and paste it (as a link) into PowerPoint or Word and when some small changes are required users will double click on the 'excel area' within PPT/Word to open that file for editing. Unfortunately this causes excel custom functions not working at all.

Your Environment

Expected behavior

When using paste as link functionality and opening excel via PowerPoint/Word editing it should also boot add-in and register custom functions properly.

Current behavior

Custom functions are not registered resulting in #NAME! errors and completely breaking the user flow.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Prepare Excel report with Custom Functions, save it.
  2. Copy part of the report
  3. Open PowerPoint, create new presentation and paste special image
  4. It looks like this in PowerPoint: image
  5. Save the presentation.
  6. Close Excel and PowerPoint
  7. Open the save presentation, update link and double-click on the 'report from excel' area.
  8. it opens excel but the Custom Functions are not available: image

Context

This is critical for the customers as they typically use excel for reporting and source for the tables/charts within Word or PowerPoint.

rundongmsft commented 1 year ago

Hi @4tti, this is a by-design behavior. The registration of Custom Functions depends on the installation of Office add-in, but Office add-in is not supported in embedded mode.

4tti commented 1 year ago

@rundongmsft it is not "editing" in embedded mode (like within PowerPoint), it will open excel instance with that file so I assume it should really try to initialize the addin.

4tti commented 1 year ago

If you want I can share recording but privately.

rundongmsft commented 1 year ago

Please provide me a recording, thanks.

4tti commented 1 year ago

Then please share your e-mail. @rundongmsft

rundongmsft commented 1 year ago

You can send me the video by giving feedback: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-do-i-give-feedback-on-microsoft-365-2b102d44-b43f-4dd2-9ff4-23cf144cfb11. Please add the issue id "#3350" to the feedback's title, so that I can quickly find your feedback.

4tti commented 1 year ago

Done

4tti commented 1 year ago

@rundongmsft any update please?

jiju-MS commented 1 year ago

Hey, @4tti , If I understand correctly, your scenario is trying to use custom function in embedded mode, unfortunately, it is not supported for custom function yet. please share your feature request here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-developer-platform/idb-p/Microsoft365DeveloperPlatform

4tti commented 1 year ago

@jiju-MS but as I wrote above (And sent the recording) it is not embedded mode. Embedded mode looks like this: image

I am using linked excel file which - using double-click - opens EXCEL instance: image

gmichaud commented 1 year ago

I would like to add my voice to this - I understand the challenges with embedded mode (it’s pretty much unusable with COM-based addins and XLL custom functions as well), but Paste as Link should work fine and is something users will expect to use.

rundongmsft commented 1 year ago

Hi @4tti, we have figured out your scenario and reproduced this issue. We opened an internal bug to track this issue: #8013330. You can provide the scale of affected users, it will help us re-prioritize this issue. Thanks for your patience!

4tti commented 1 year ago

@rundongmsft first of all .. thanks a lot! well, from my POV it affects everyone who wants to use Excel as a basis for PowerPoint presentations (to show tables or charts). Actually I would even dare to say it is one of the basic scenarios and important one. With our legacy software (COM based) this was used by almost every single customer... so we are talking about thousands of companies.

@gmichaud maybe you can comment and give your POV.

4tti commented 2 months ago

Hello @rundongmsft ,

is there any update please? Some of the customers are asking again. Thanks a lot in advance!