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EG_95689317-Bedrock
7-Bedrock
May 11, 2025
Solved

Mathcad Prime 11 Excel Component Error

  • May 11, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 1440 views

I’ve been searching for days and cannot find a solution. Mathcad Prime 11, Windows 10 (and 11 on another machine), MS365 current version fully licensed.

 

I can usually insert an excel component into my worksheet. Any worksheet; new, old, etc. As soon as I create an input or output variable, the border around the component turns red and at the bottom I read an “Excel is busy…” error.

 

Sometimes I get that error while trying to insert the component and it would let me do it.

 

I’ve read all over that people are having this problem on various versions of Excel, Mathcad, Windows. None of the posted solutions seem to work for anyone, and none have worked for me.

 

I believe way back when I was using Mathcad 15 this feature worked perfectly. Now it seems to be a problem that, although widespread, PTC says they cannot reproduce it on their systems. I find this hard to believe.

 

Does anyone have a solution for this problem? This is a very useful feature when it works, but since switching to Prime I have yet to get it working.

Best answer by EG_9568931

Turns out that all of the computers I have been using used to have 32-bit Excel installed, and apparently it was not uninstalled fully. I just found and removed the remaining 32-bit components, repaired MS365 64-bit, and now the Excel component works properly.

4 replies

W
Werner_E25-Diamond I
25-Diamond I
May 11, 2025

Unfortunately this problem showed up here in the forum quite often and I also was already bitten by this nasty "Excel is busy" error message. My personal 'solution' is to avoid using an Excel component (after all its not possible that easy to embed an already existing Excel sheet anyway) and use READEXCEL to import data from Excel sheets. Of course this may not be acceptable for other people.

Maybe one of the answers given in the threads I link to in my reply here

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Mathcad/Insert-Excel-error/m-p/847348/highlight/true#M204418

may help. Especially the knowledge base article referred to in the first link.
https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS245917
Another one can be found here

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS322086

So PTC sure should be aware of the problem even though in both articles it can be read that PTC was not able to reproduce the error 😞

 

E
EG_95689317-BedrockAuthor
7-Bedrock
May 12, 2025

Thanks. Have gone through all of those already. Even tried updating the .NET framework on my computers. Still no good. Every computer I use has this problem. This has to be a bug in the Prime code. M15 worked just fine. Of course, we can’t use M15 anymore. Frustrating. 

J
JeffH116-Pearl
16-Pearl
May 11, 2025

I tend to try and open Excel (stand-alone) somewhere on my desktop and minimize it before opening Mathcad, and certainly before opening an Excel component.  When Excel is running (and not opening and closing) I find that the Excel component behaves a little better, but not always.

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EG_95689317-BedrockAuthor
7-Bedrock
May 12, 2025

It’s a workaround but then you have to keep track of Excel workbooks. The Excel component used to be a very useful tool. 

M
MartinHanak24-Ruby III
24-Ruby III
May 12, 2025

Hi,

please open Case at PTC Support and report the problem to PTC directly.

E
EG_95689317-BedrockAuthorAnswer
7-Bedrock
May 12, 2025

Turns out that all of the computers I have been using used to have 32-bit Excel installed, and apparently it was not uninstalled fully. I just found and removed the remaining 32-bit components, repaired MS365 64-bit, and now the Excel component works properly.

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