Section: 9. USING HELP
Subsection: 9.4 Troubleshooting Q&A's
Topic: Common Problems and Solutions


This section is intended primarily for Scorecard Owners and Administrators. It should be updated with problems or questions as they arise from using the Scorecard application.

1. I get the "Unable to initiate DDE conversation message," what's wrong?

This message appears when problems are encountered transferring data from Excel to Notes. It can be caused by a number of things:

a. As the message indicates, first make sure that Excel is running and the Scorecard spreadsheet open. Use Alt-Tab to cycle through the Windows applications you have open to confirm that Excel is active.
b. Check to make sure that Excel is not set to ignore other applications. From the Excel menu, select Tools Options and click on the General folder tab. The box Ignore Other Applications should not be checked. If it is, click it off.
c. Make sure that Notes is not set to ignore external applications. Use Notepad to examine the NOTES.INI file in your WINDOWS directory. If it has the following entry, delete it: NoExternalApps=1. This setting is particularly nasty, since it produces no Notes error message.
d. For data to be transferred from Excel to Notes, the Windows Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) commands are used. These command require the DDEML.DLL file, which should be present in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. Use File Manager to confirm that it's there.