MS Excel XLS comparison not working in ver 3.2.3.13046

[krick]

I just upgraded from ver 3.1.11.12204 to ver 3.2.3.13046.

I completely uninstalled the old version before installing the new version.

MS Excel comparisons used to work fine, however, with this new version I get this error when I try to compare two XLS files...


Can not find script file: "C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 3\Helpers\XLS_to_CSV.vbs".


My "Helpers" directory only contains these three files...

MDB_to_CSV.vbs
PdfToText.exe
XLS_to_CSV_Single.vbs


As a side note, I have the old "AdditionalFormats.bcpkg" that I used to use with the old version 3.1.11.12204. It appears to contain the "XLS_to_CSV.vbs" that BC3 is looking for. Should I install that and override the built-in formats?

[Aaron]

Hello,

Yes, reinstall the AdditionalFormats once more to get the Helper file back in place. You do not need to uninstall previous versions before an upgrade.

The issue is that your settings files are stored as XML in your APpData directory, but the Helper\ directory contains the actual conversion process. By uninstalling the program (we leave settings in AppData), your settings are preserved and pointing to a helper\ that has been removed.

Reinstalling your additional file formats should clear things up. Let us know if you have any trouble.

[krick]

I was hesitant to install the AdditionalFormats because the what's currently posted on the downloads area differs from what I downloaded in the old packs. The text on the Additional Formats page implies that some of the formats that used to be external are now built into BC3.

Also, the reason I uninstalled first is because I couldn't install the new version over the previous version. I kept getting an error message about "BCShellEx.dll" being in use.

After several attempts, I ended up doing the following dance to get rid of it...

1) uninstall the old version of BC3, which leaves BCShellEx.dll behind because it's in use
2) rename BCShellEx.dll to BCShellEx_dll.bak
3) reboot
4) rename "Beyond Compare 3" installation folder to "~Beyond Compare 3"
5) reboot
6) delete "~Beyond Compare 3" folder
7) install new version of BC3

I may not have needed both reboots, but I did it just in case.

[Aaron]

Hello,

An install of BC3 should be able to work over a previous install. Did you reboot since your last install of BC3? If not, that could explain the lock on the shell extension.

I would expect:
1) Install BC3
2) Install first patch
3) Reboot
4) Install second patch

As for the restructured download page, yes, that is true. By default, we already open Excel files in the Data Compare. Some customers were then installing all additional file formats and were confused why their HTML files were opening in the Data Compare and the Excel files in their Text Compare. We separated out the 'duplicated' extensions to try and stress the default rules first.
Since you already have the additional format installed from before, you would need its Helper installed again (or revert to the default Data Compare rule).