I have been reading this board for a long time and never needed to post a question since it had already been asked/covered by someone before me. In the meantime, I have learned a lot, so I will start with a "Thank you" for all the posts that helped me learn.
I have a question that I have not seen asked previously, so hopefully someone will know what I am doing wrong and set me straight. I am just past the beginner stages with Excel. I have used pivot tables and indirect references and table lookups and date and time computations and lots of conditional formatting, but have never learned any of the more advanced features.
First of all, I am definitely unclear how a web query works and how it relates to a normal Internet Explorer session. They seem to share some information but not other things. For example, my homepage carries over and many of the recent sites visited in Internet Explorer seem to be available in the dropdown for the Web Query. However, if I log into a website in Internet Explorer, that login does not persist to an Excel WebQuery. If there is something somewhere that explains how these two should work, I would be glad to do some reading. Most of what I have done is based on threads here and elsewhere along with trial and error.
Here is some background....
I have a series of spreadsheets which were built in Excel 2010 which have been working (at least with regard to this topic) for over a year. These spreadsheets use data from a web query to populate tables and perform computations & projections based on a variety of data. One of the websites I use requires a login. Though I have never been able to automate that login process, what I have done is choose Data, Get External Data, From Web, and then access the website and log in. The login persists throughout the Excel session. I can close spreadsheets and open new ones and run the same queries without performing a new login as long as I do not close Excel. If I open another instance of Excel, I must log in again there, but within each instance of Excel, I have not seen the need to log in more than once (unless there is an abend of some kind). I run several similar macro-enabled Workbooks at the same time, with the macros repeating about once a minute during certain hours. Since they are running the same macros and queries I run each in a separate Excel Instance to avoid conflicts. This is the behavior in Excel 2010 and it is working fine (or at least reasonably well).
My newer machine has a subscription to Office 365 which I believe uses Excel 2013. This version of Excel is a bit different. Initially, I had difficulty creating multiple Excel Instances, but am now quite comfortable doing that. Thus, I run multiple copies of my spreadsheets, each in an instance and it works to some extent, but not as reliably as it does in the older Excel version.
Here is my problem:
The login does not persist to the same degree it did in Excel 2010. I was not clear what was causing me problems when I first started using the new version (first I had problems running multiple instances and then I was unsure if the website itself was having problems). However, I was able to work with up to 3 simultaneous Workbooks running and logged into a website, retrieving and reporting data. I was not sure why an attempt at a 4th instance failed, but had attributed it to human error (i.e., maybe I forgot to log in first). I am now not so sure.
A couple of days ago, I tried to run three instances of Excel as described above on the newer machine and two worked, but the third did not. I realized I must have forgotten to log in. I logged in, ran the macros and they failed as if I had not logged in. I returned to the start page (which is different when logged in) and it had a login prompt again. I logged in again (definitely successful), but did not start the macros. Instead, I returned to the start page....it was prompting still for login credentials. I went to one of the two workbooks that were running successfully. I logged out and logged back in and returned to the start page and saw that I remained logged in. Doing it side-by-side with one of the working and with the non-working instance, they were both consistent in their behavior; for one the login always persisted, for the other it never persisted. I shut down the third instance and restarted it (several times), it would no longer retain my login.
I closed the nonworking spreadsheet and ran it on one of the other two machines (Running Window 7 Ultimate or Professional) using Excel 2010 where I was able to keep as many as five instances running on each with no problem.
Yesterday, I tried the new machine (Windows 8.1 Professional with latest update) again and could not get even one instance of Excel to retain the login information. I closed things up and went to Internet Explorer to clear every kind of cache and history (remember, I said I do not know the relationship between Internet Explorer and the browser within Excel which looks a lot like Internet Explorer). Closing, opening, restarting, shutting down the machine, restarting Windows, nothing seemed to affect this behavior.
Today, thinking it might be related to the website I am using, I decided to try something more generic. I created a web query session on an old machine (Win7 & Excel 2010) and the new one (Win8 & Excel 2013). I went to mail.yahoo.com on each and successfully logged in and saw my messages. On each machine, I then closed the browser window and re-opened it. In the older environment, the login persisted and I was brought straight to my inbox list of emails. In the newer environment it has lost my login and I had to re-login. I want the login to persist in the newer environment as it had orginally and as it seems to do better in the older environment, but I do not know what I need to do to fix this.
I am unsure if I have adequately explained what I am looking for, but is there some setting or option that I need to change or is there some cache that needs to be cleared to change this behavior back? The odd thing was the three Excel instances where one worked differently a few days ago. It looks like something got filled up or corrupted.
I could post the (copious) VBA code, but I don't think this is a coding issue since I can reproduce the problem with a blank worksheet that has no macros and with a fairly generic email login as described.
Any ideas from someone who has a clue? I am totally clueless here.
Thank you.
I have a question that I have not seen asked previously, so hopefully someone will know what I am doing wrong and set me straight. I am just past the beginner stages with Excel. I have used pivot tables and indirect references and table lookups and date and time computations and lots of conditional formatting, but have never learned any of the more advanced features.
First of all, I am definitely unclear how a web query works and how it relates to a normal Internet Explorer session. They seem to share some information but not other things. For example, my homepage carries over and many of the recent sites visited in Internet Explorer seem to be available in the dropdown for the Web Query. However, if I log into a website in Internet Explorer, that login does not persist to an Excel WebQuery. If there is something somewhere that explains how these two should work, I would be glad to do some reading. Most of what I have done is based on threads here and elsewhere along with trial and error.
Here is some background....
I have a series of spreadsheets which were built in Excel 2010 which have been working (at least with regard to this topic) for over a year. These spreadsheets use data from a web query to populate tables and perform computations & projections based on a variety of data. One of the websites I use requires a login. Though I have never been able to automate that login process, what I have done is choose Data, Get External Data, From Web, and then access the website and log in. The login persists throughout the Excel session. I can close spreadsheets and open new ones and run the same queries without performing a new login as long as I do not close Excel. If I open another instance of Excel, I must log in again there, but within each instance of Excel, I have not seen the need to log in more than once (unless there is an abend of some kind). I run several similar macro-enabled Workbooks at the same time, with the macros repeating about once a minute during certain hours. Since they are running the same macros and queries I run each in a separate Excel Instance to avoid conflicts. This is the behavior in Excel 2010 and it is working fine (or at least reasonably well).
My newer machine has a subscription to Office 365 which I believe uses Excel 2013. This version of Excel is a bit different. Initially, I had difficulty creating multiple Excel Instances, but am now quite comfortable doing that. Thus, I run multiple copies of my spreadsheets, each in an instance and it works to some extent, but not as reliably as it does in the older Excel version.
Here is my problem:
The login does not persist to the same degree it did in Excel 2010. I was not clear what was causing me problems when I first started using the new version (first I had problems running multiple instances and then I was unsure if the website itself was having problems). However, I was able to work with up to 3 simultaneous Workbooks running and logged into a website, retrieving and reporting data. I was not sure why an attempt at a 4th instance failed, but had attributed it to human error (i.e., maybe I forgot to log in first). I am now not so sure.
A couple of days ago, I tried to run three instances of Excel as described above on the newer machine and two worked, but the third did not. I realized I must have forgotten to log in. I logged in, ran the macros and they failed as if I had not logged in. I returned to the start page (which is different when logged in) and it had a login prompt again. I logged in again (definitely successful), but did not start the macros. Instead, I returned to the start page....it was prompting still for login credentials. I went to one of the two workbooks that were running successfully. I logged out and logged back in and returned to the start page and saw that I remained logged in. Doing it side-by-side with one of the working and with the non-working instance, they were both consistent in their behavior; for one the login always persisted, for the other it never persisted. I shut down the third instance and restarted it (several times), it would no longer retain my login.
I closed the nonworking spreadsheet and ran it on one of the other two machines (Running Window 7 Ultimate or Professional) using Excel 2010 where I was able to keep as many as five instances running on each with no problem.
Yesterday, I tried the new machine (Windows 8.1 Professional with latest update) again and could not get even one instance of Excel to retain the login information. I closed things up and went to Internet Explorer to clear every kind of cache and history (remember, I said I do not know the relationship between Internet Explorer and the browser within Excel which looks a lot like Internet Explorer). Closing, opening, restarting, shutting down the machine, restarting Windows, nothing seemed to affect this behavior.
Today, thinking it might be related to the website I am using, I decided to try something more generic. I created a web query session on an old machine (Win7 & Excel 2010) and the new one (Win8 & Excel 2013). I went to mail.yahoo.com on each and successfully logged in and saw my messages. On each machine, I then closed the browser window and re-opened it. In the older environment, the login persisted and I was brought straight to my inbox list of emails. In the newer environment it has lost my login and I had to re-login. I want the login to persist in the newer environment as it had orginally and as it seems to do better in the older environment, but I do not know what I need to do to fix this.
I am unsure if I have adequately explained what I am looking for, but is there some setting or option that I need to change or is there some cache that needs to be cleared to change this behavior back? The odd thing was the three Excel instances where one worked differently a few days ago. It looks like something got filled up or corrupted.
I could post the (copious) VBA code, but I don't think this is a coding issue since I can reproduce the problem with a blank worksheet that has no macros and with a fairly generic email login as described.
Any ideas from someone who has a clue? I am totally clueless here.
Thank you.
