Excel Solver Add-In / Alternatives

[lJoublanc]

Hi,

I can't seem to get any Excel Add-Ins to work. In particular, I need the 'Solver' for an assignment ...
I've tried with two office versions (2007/2003), which I've managed to install successfully (you have to enable the Solver add-in during installation), but it's the same every time.
When I try to start it up I get a message saying can't access SOLVER.XLA, and then '400'. Initially I got a msgbox with squares in it - this was fixed by adding dcom98 with winetricks.

I would like to simply know whether someone has been able to successfully use this ('tools' -> 'solver...' after enabling it in 'tools'->'add-ins...') in any version of office, or whether I'm simply wasting my time.

Alternatively, if someone knows of a free linux spreadsheet application that has a non-linear solver, I would be grateful. I've already tried OO3 and gnumeric.

[dimesio]

Hi,

I can't seem to get any Excel Add-Ins to work. In particular, I need the 'Solver' for an assignment ...
I've tried with two office versions (2007/2003), which I've managed to install successfully (you have to enable the Solver add-in during installation), but it's the same every time.
When I try to start it up I get a message saying can't access SOLVER.XLA, and then '400'. Initially I got a msgbox with squares in it - this was fixed by adding dcom98 with winetricks.

I would like to simply know whether someone has been able to successfully use this ('tools' -> 'solver...' after enabling it in 'tools'->'add-ins...') in any version of office, or whether I'm simply wasting my time.

Alternatively, if someone knows of a free linux spreadsheet application that has a non-linear solver, I would be grateful. I've already tried OO3 and gnumeric.

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11447

[lJoublanc]

Yes, I guess I should have mentioned I did see this in bugzilla earlier. I suppose this confirms it's a common problem. Maybe I should rephrase the question:

Has anybody been able to work around this problem in Wine?

If so, would they mind sharing how they did it? Thanks.

[lJoublanc]

Common guys I'm sure somebody has run into this or had some ideas about how to fix it?! The bug mentioned below has had not movement for the past half year... Anyone got any ideas?

[dimesio]

As noted in the bug report, dcom98 doesn't work with Office 2003/7. You could try removing dcom98 and using ole32, oleaut32, and rpcrt4 from XP.

[DanKegel]

OpenOffice 3.0 will have a solver. See
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/fea ... tml#Solver

OpenOffice.org 3 is very close to release; you can download release
candidate 4 now from
http://download.openoffice.org/680/

Try that and let us know how it goes.

[lJoublanc]

As noted in the bug report, dcom98 doesn't work with Office 2003/7. You could try removing dcom98 and using ole32, oleaut32, and rpcrt4 from XP.

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback. I've gone ahead and tried this, with no success. It now says 'cannot use object linking and embedding', followed by 'An error occured initializing the VBA libraries (14)' and finally "microsoft excel cannot access the file 'C:\program files\microsoft office\OFFICE11\library\solver\solver.xla' " ...

I can't find anything related to this in the forums ...

[lJoublanc]

OpenOffice 3.0 will have a solver. See
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/fea ... tml#Solver

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your reply. I have gone ahead and tried this earlier. Unfortunately OO3 only has a linear solver which makes it pretty much useless for what I'm trying to do ....