In order for the user to take advantage of the new Copy and Paste from Excel functionality, Open XML SDK 2.0 needs to be in place. By default, this is installed with GP 2013, so all users should have it. Open XML SDK 2.0 was introduced in GP 2013 because it was much more performant than the old COM Object Model. However, some users still prefer to use the old method from GP 2010 in order to do imports for things like budgets from excel that have calculated cells.
I recently ran into an instance where the user was updating to GP 2013 R2. When they tried to take advantage of the new Copy and Paste from Excel functionality in the GL Transaction Entry Window, nothing happened in GP. No reports or errors showed up like you would expect if the user had invalid or no information selected to be copied.
The reason for this issue was a setting that they had altered/added in the DEX.ini in order to use the old COM Object Model:
‘UseCOMForExcelExport = TRUE’
With this setting in place, they will not be able to use the Copy and Paste to Excel Functionality because it doesn’t allow GP to use Open XML SKD 2.0 which it needs in order to Paste the information from Excel to the Journal Entry. You can easily disable this setting so that you can use the Copy and Paste from Excel in GP by changing the line in the DEX.ini to ‘UseCOMForExcelExport = FALSE’, (If GP is open, make sure to close and re-launch GP). If for some reason a user would need to toggle between both the old COM object Model and Open XML SDK often, you could also create two launch files pointing each pointing at a different DEX.ini file.
I am excited about this new feature, and I hope the information above is helpful to you. For more information on new features in GP 2013 R2 Financials please visit the link to our video below.
(Please visit the site to view this video)
Thanks,
Isaac Olson