is Lotus 123 Release 5 compatible with Windows 2000??? 9

[briandoc]

Have not been able to get 123 r5 to run under Win2000 SP1. Has anyone had success getting it to work? Should it work? Is there a work-around if it doesn't out of the box? Thanks for any info!!!

 

[Guest_imported]

I am also running windows xp pro with 123 release 5. I am running into the same problems with the color panel not showing up. A gentleman in my office called and found out you can obtain an upgrade for 123 release 5 to get it to work properly in xp. I do not know if it works yet because I just found out about it. If anybody else hears of an easy fix to this minor problem please post and let me know. Any help with this one and I'll be grateful.

 

[Guest_imported]

It is nice to know that there are others that feel Lotus 123v5 is far superior than any other spreadsheet out there. I am looking for someone who can help me find out if there is a fix out there for the version manager functionality in "post version 5" releases of 123. Specifically, in version 5, if you made a change in a versioned range, you would have to actively confirm that you indeed wanted to save that change. In later releases, version manager assumes you want to keep the change and doesn't allow you to revert back to the old data, in fact, it is lost. Any fixes for this? I rely on the version manager for my work, and a fix for this would be great because I could use later versions of 123 that calculate much faster than version 5 in the latest versions of Windows.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

JV

 

[mikesherlock]

I have a Lotus 5.0 / Windows 2000 Pro problem. I am using a macro which uses a {choose-item} that leads to a file name to combine a data file. It uses this file to drop data into a {dialog} for display and editing, and then saves the file back again. This is a loop that is repeated about 40 times, but it invariably gives me a GPF after about 17- 20 entries.

I think it may be a combination of {windowsoff} and the {dialog} and the meemory not clearing properly, but I can't find a work around. It does not crash with Win 95 or 98.

Thanks for the tip on DefaultSeparateVDM = yes - it works for me

 

[DaleWatson123321]

Mike,

I can't be certain this will resolve your problem, but perhaps it's worth checking out.

Try the {RESTART} command.

To get the explanation of how this works, simply type {RESTART} into a cell, and hit the Help key <F1>.

Please advise as to how you make out.

Regards, ...Dale Watson dwatson@bsi.gov.mb.ca

 

[Reinhard]

I changed from Win98 to Win2k(SP2)/NovNet4.831 and work at the moment with both. I also got problems in a (branch) loop, in a macro that runs proper since 123R1a (with some small changes). It's a backup macro. After 50 backups he needs a pause (the memory check shows 100% usage). After 5 minutes I can go slow on - where I normaly start new - or it breaks.

In the first testing I installed the MS compatibility tool, but because I didn't notice any difference to a normal start in some few testing, I canceled it.

Perhaps you test it, installing it's not much work, I will reinstall and test it by time.

Best regards, Reinhard

 

[crazybird]

What a wonderful thread! Very encouraging.
A couple of observations:

R97 is buggy and has a very fragile video interface. It is without doubt the worst version. I'd suggest getting R9.x instead if R5 is not an option.

FYI I've just upgraded to W2k at work and have had few problems. One was when using {CHOOSE-FILE} a GPF would be thrown if the file was at the bottom of a deeply nested directory structure. Moving the files up a directory level or two solved the problem.

Dale, I love your idealism. Unfortunately LotusScript is needed for Lotus Notes and that is a vastly more important product to Lotus than 1-2-3. Integration is the buzzword now, even if not that many users use their spreadsheet's macro language to access their word processor. I can't conceive of them backpedaling there, much as we both would like. I'm afraid you and I are doomed to be anachronisms.


I think the only challenge to the MS juggernaut will/and is coming from the open source movement (on the LINUX platform).

 

[mikesherlock]

Thanks for your contributions

Dale, I had tried the {restart} before to no avail,It releases anything stacked.

Reinhard, I have tried running in Win 95, 98 and NT compatibility mode (set withing the Lotus 123 shortcut), again to no avail. Is this the same as the MS Compatibility Tool?

Regards
Mike

 

[mikesherlock]

Hi again

I thought I would mention a couple more things - I have eliminated the {windowsoff} causing the problem. Secondly the GPF happens immediately after I have saved the extract back to a file:

{file-extract +&quot;data&quot;&a_number&&quot;.dta&quot;;;;replace;data_range;values}
{blank data_range}

Regards
Mike

 

[Reinhard]

Yea I think it's mainly for Win95 compatibility, not special for Win311/16.bit. I don't can state the direct address because I got it from the German pages.

You will find it in the MS Knowledgebase (search for Compatibility). The german article to this is translated from the english one:

Q279792 HOW TO: Enable Application Compatibility-Mode Technology in Windows 2000 SP2 and SP3.

Because of Carnival I took free for a looonger weekend, so I don't can test it at the moment.

Hope it works, Reinhard

 

[FrankenPengie]

Just had to post to this one as another &quot;admirer&quot; of this thread. My step-father is an old 123 user and I too learned all I know on it. Then we got OfficeSuite 97 and soon gave up. My step-dad stuck with older versions(he still has an old DOS version running on Win98 as well as 123 v1 for Win) while I moved on to Borland then Corel office Suite. Now Corel is all but dead and you certainly don't hear much about Lotus anymore. I now have MS running under Win2k and my step-dad came to me last night asking if I had the old 5 1/4 Baler disks. He has something he'd like to sell but the only way to do it with our knowledge and ensure compatability with our customers is to compile a spreadsheet. Though I have MS and used Corel I never got away from Lotus' macros. Seems we're stuck.

 

[mikesherlock]

Hi

I think I have just found the answer to the GPF problem I reported earlier, and it is just as confusing as the problem itself It involves a looping macro which started with a {choose-item}, which I had given a title of &quot;Data Entry&quot;. This resulted in a guaranteed GPF after the 18th entry.

I thought I would keep an eye on the number of entries I had made, so I changed the title to include a running total i.e. +&quot;Data Entry (&quot;&@string(@dsum(data_r,3),0)&&quot; so far)&quot;.

Low and behold it no longer gives me the GPF?

Mike

 

[sandropisani]

So good to see so many 123r5 fans out there. Great thread too.

Parts of this thread have dwelt on the GPF problem and various solutions have been proposed. Our observations and solution run more or less along the lines of henryHI's Aug 31, 2001 contribution.

That's until we started using more than 1 PC loaded with Win2000 sharing files over the network. The situation now is that when 2 or more PCs operate under Win2000 the users can open the same .wk4 file simultaneously, both can get rights, and both can save the file totally unaware that it's also in use on the other PC. No file reservation warnings are given !!

Note that we never had this problem when one of the pair of PCs was running under Win95.

I don't know if this failure of the file reservation features of 123r5 is related to the GPF problem. We may have got round the latter, but this one's proving far harder to solve.

Has enyone come across it?
Better still, has anyone cracked it?

Thanks

Sandro Pisani

 

[Dibbler]

I am running 123 V5 and W2K but need to install any Novell client. On the basis of this forum I have opted for 4.81 with the latest patches but 123 and Freelance crash every time (the GPF mentions module L1WNET.DLL). I am not using PCAnywhere and I have also modified WOW thru regedit. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Reinhard]

With Novell 4.83SP1 (SP1 is important) it works.
HTH, Reinhard

 

[Dibbler]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I cannot track down 4.83 SP1, which seems to have been removed from the Novell web site (nothing came up on Google either) and SP2 - as you can guess - causes GPFs in 123 and Freelance.

 

[kmacy]

Hello Everyone,
I just am glad to know that I am not the only one out there who thinks that Lotus 123 Release 5 was the best version ever. I used to use it everyday for about 8 years as a cash flow analyst. You have no idea how upset I was when Lotus 97 came out. I missed the old macro language and I really missed the &quot;SHift:&quot; wysiwyg feature for formating a speadsheet. I loved that.

Any way, I have been using Microsoft Excel for the last 2 years and now I am setting up a business plan for a new company I am starting and I've decided that I'm not going to use Excel anymore if I can help it. I can't even begin to tell you how much more productive I am in the old R5. I hate every speadsheet after Lotus Release 5. So tonight I bought a copy on ebay for $33. I run Microsft XP and love XP. I'm hoping that I can get back to doing great speadsheets with ease when I get my R5!

Come on Lotus, get back to your roots!

 

[crazybird]

Good to hear of your experience. Welcome to the club!
Please let us know how R5 gets along under XP.
Sooner or later most of us will have to make that transition.

 

[kmacy]

I got the Smartsuite 96 (contains R5 of 123) today. I installed it on my XP machine.

When I first installed it, I tried installing the entire SmartSuite 96 package. I got an error when I tried this. So, since I'm not interested in anything but 123, I decided to install with just 123 selected and nothing else.

This worked fine. 123 R5 is now installed. I played around, tried the old &quot;Shift :&quot; for formatting and it worked great. I can't tell you how much I missed that. Tried adding through spreadsheet pages and it worked fine. Now, I don't no if I will have problems in the future or not, but so far no crashes or anything.

One thing that really struck me was how much my fingers remembered. It was amazing, like riding a bike. That is what I missed most about 123. All the things you can do without the mouse that you have to use a mouse for with excel. And also, the amount of keystrokes required to do things is a lot less in 123 r5 vs Excel. It's just a damn more productive spreadsheet.

Now having said all that, the first thing that popped up that made me go &quot;ahhhhh&quot; was the old 8 character file names and when navigating your files you only see 8 characters. I can live with it though.

So far so good. I'll keep you all informed. I have to go find all my old cash flow analysis spreadsheets with all my old macros so I can get working on new spreadsheets.

My last thought is still &quot;What was Lotus thinking after 123R5.&quot; I can't believed they ruined such a good product. Unbelievable. If you take R5 and modernize it but keep all the old great features, I'd buy 2 copies yesterday.


Thanks

 

[Filpi01]

I have a client with the following issue occuring and was hoping to gain some insight. They just recently upgraded from Windows 98 to 2000, and since then they have had issues with their macros. Primarily, the commands aren't recognized in Win2K, and so the files aren't printing correctly. More specifically, the files aren't printing from the correct trays, which is causing some issues with their production of invoices and statements. There are also other files with more complex macros, and it seems as if Win2K doesn't recognize the classic key strokes they were coded in. Was hoping to gain some insight on how to advise my client to troubleshoot and remedy this situation.

 

[mikesherlock]

Hi Filpi01
I think you need to see the help area - type in &quot;{set&quot; and press F1 and you will see some of the set options. Click on Info Components, Info Component Categories and then Printer Setup. You will see there the commands to use to change the bins:

{set &quot;printer-setup-bins&quot;;&quot;text&quot;} where &quot;text&quot; is one of the ones available to your printer.

Hope this helps
Mike