Yeah, Paul. This client is a toughy. It's my only experience with a big
multi-national company -- the kind people who have worked there for 30 years
can walk around and don't recognize people. Software decisions are handed
down by people that you have never met and who have never spent a day in your
office seeing how you do your work. They have an "approved software
vendor" list, and it basically says Microsoft. Most of their RBase apps were
migrated to other packages, but 2 applications have survived the purge due to
their importance. However, they terminated my consulting contract 3 years
ago because the departments were forbidden to spend money changing their
RBase apps.
1 of the apps was very image-loaded, with lots of PDFs to manage, wanting
to copy and paste and apply formatting ... Got to the point that 6.5++
cannot handle it. Don't know how they did it, but they got permission for me
to
upgrade this app to 7.6 and they're thrilled. But the other app is, and
probably always will be, mired in 6.5++. That's because they spent millions
of dollars on an enhanced vertical market app to replace this RBase app.
All the data is now entered into this other app, but they cannot get all the
reports they want out of it, so now 6.5++ is a front end where we bring in
files from this app (in either .txt or .xls format) and produce reports and
spreadsheets that they distribute all over the world. 7.6 would be
infinitely better, but to get it would be to admit "failure" on their parts.
ASAMOF
they still have not renewed my contract because I think they don't want to
be reminded that 3 years later I'm still doing RBase enhancements for them.
Allbeit most of it still in 6.5
Karen
> Can you imagine the money spent for all those Office 2007 licenses, and
> they tell you not to upgrade. The shame, you have a tough client.
>
>
>
> You might consider VBA/C++ and several examples of code (I found a couple
> source codes for 2007Excel that read the BIFF12 format embedded in Excel)
> that are out there, to get you where you want to be. It would cost more
> than them just biting the bullet to upgrade to 9.0, but just think of the
> fun you have in the mean time. NOT!
>
>
>
>
>
> Good Luck
>
>
>
