Getting started with Excel Services

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I’ve recently started working with Excel Services, one of the new services in Microsoft Office System Server (MOSS). It’s Excel for the server, and very neat too. Lots of people have been asking for this type of calculation engine, and now that’s its out in beta 2, you can check it out yourself.

The easiest way to see it for yourself, is to check out the following 15 minute Channel 9 tutorial by an old friend of mine, Ted Pattison - https://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=197660

“Microsoft Office SharePoint Server introduces Excel Services to provide a server-side engine for loading Excel spreadsheets, calculating formulas and rendering their output as wide-reach HTML targeting the browser. This tutorial steps through the process of configuring Excel Services so that you can publish an Excel spreadsheet to a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site and then render it to the browser using the server-side rendering engine of Excel“

 

 If you want to use this to help you configure and set up your own Excel Services site, I have scribbled down some notes from the video that describe what he is doing, to help you:

 

o Via SharePoint 3 Central Administration

· Application Management: Create new site collection

§ Set owner to admin, choose Blank Site template

· Site Actions: Create new doc library for Excel

§ Make default template Excel

· Operations: Services on Server

§ Check Excel Calculation Services it is started

· Application Management: Create / Configure this farms shared services

§ Check you have a shared services provider, or create one

§ Drop down: open shared services admin site

· shared services admin site: trusted file location

§ Add do library

o Excel

· Set up named ranges for cells

· Payment = ABS(PMT(Rate/12, Years * 12, Loan)

· Check how you can from SharePoint load data into Excel, or just get a snapshot with data and no formula

o SharePoint

· Document library advanced settings

§ Display as web page