2591617 - Could not connect to Microsoft Excel error message when opening specific Dashboards file

• When trying to open a specific Dashboards report the following error occurs:
  
  "Could not connect to Microsoft Excel. To prevent further data corruption, the program must close."
  
  
• Newly created dashboard file can be opened in the designer without any issues.

• SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.x
• SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.x
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2010
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2013
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2016

1. Open Dashboards designer
2. Open a specific Dashboards report
3. The following error message occurs: "Could not connect to Microsoft Excel. To prevent further data corruption, the program must close."

• Microsoft Office prevents the opening of excel by starting in protected mode for files are downloaded from BI Platform or was created another machine or environment.

To narrow down further where’s the problem, product support suggest the following steps for troubleshooting:

1. Back up the .xlf file
2. Rename the file extension to .zip
3. Open the .zip file, and copy 'xldoc' onto desktop
4. Rename xldoc to xldoc.xls
5. Open xldoc.xls with Excel
   -> Warning will be displayed about the protected mode: Office has detected a problem with this file. Editing may harm your computer. Click for more details.
   
   

To eliminiate this message, you may turn off the file validation of the excel application via registry. These regsitry keys may does not exist, so you can add them into the regitry for these excel versions:

• Microsoft Office - Excel 2007
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software \Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation
  Add a new REG_DWORD type value called InvalidFileUIOptions into the registry and set value to 0.
  
  
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2010
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation
  Add a new REG_DWORD type value called DisableEditFromPV into the registry and set value to 0.
  
  
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2013
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation
  Add a new REG_DWORD type value called EnableOnLoad into the registry and set value to 0.
• Microsoft Office - Excel 2016
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation
  Add a new REG_DWORD type value called EnableOnLoad into the registry and set value to 0.

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