Problem in Excel RTD and Manual Recalculation

I have encountered an issue with Excel RTD. I have reproduced this
problem with a number of third party RTD servers (e.g. Bloomberg) and
also in a "test" RTD server taken from this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285339/

The issue is that when running Excel in Manual Calculation mode,
inserting or deleting a row or column anywhere in a spreadsheet
containing RTD calls causes a Disconnect Data call for each RTD
function, followed by a ServerTerminate call. The spreadsheet is now
disconnected from the live data. Pressing F9 causes the RTD server to
reconnect.

This behaviour does not occur when Excel is run in Automatic
Calculation mode.

THe problem is that when you have a sheet with thousands of RTD calls,
taking minutes to start up, inserting or deleting a column or row
ANYWHERE in the sheet causes a delay of several minutes until all the
data is received.

Has anyone seen anything like this?

I am using Excel 2002 SP3, on Microsoft XP Professional SP2.

A few notes:

I cannot run the sheet in Automatic mode. The thousands of RTD calls
contain dynamic market data, which feeds a number of
processor-intensive analytics functions. Additionally, the users
require a sheet that updates when they press F9, but does not update
before their eyes.

I cannot update to Excel 2003 in the near future.

No specifics on RTD but if you donot get help try:
1) why are you inserting rows and Columns? - can you work around?
2) Put your RTD calls in an "orderly/structured" calling sheet and use a
second sheet for presentation to users ( cell references or names pull from
calling sheet)where inserting rows and columns will not cause this problem?

Hope you find a better answer but # 2 should be workable

"[email protected]" wrote:

> I have encountered an issue with Excel RTD. I have reproduced this
> problem with a number of third party RTD servers (e.g. Bloomberg) and
> also in a "test" RTD server taken from this article:
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285339/
>
> The issue is that when running Excel in Manual Calculation mode,
> inserting or deleting a row or column anywhere in a spreadsheet
> containing RTD calls causes a Disconnect Data call for each RTD
> function, followed by a ServerTerminate call. The spreadsheet is now
> disconnected from the live data. Pressing F9 causes the RTD server to
> reconnect.
>
> This behaviour does not occur when Excel is run in Automatic
> Calculation mode.
>
> THe problem is that when you have a sheet with thousands of RTD calls,
> taking minutes to start up, inserting or deleting a column or row
> ANYWHERE in the sheet causes a delay of several minutes until all the
> data is received.
>
> Has anyone seen anything like this?
>
>

Thanks for the reply

I'm trying everything I can to work around this, but this is an aged
and venerable market sheet, with masses of sheets, data, etc
As far as I can tell this RTD behaviour is undocumented. It is also
extremely nasty and results in masses of extra network traffic.
Most market sheets I've worked with have Calc set to Manual; I can't
believe this issue got past QA

Anyone know anything about this? Microsoft?