Anyone here using 64 bit Excel with the solver add-in?
I can’t get mine to work, and the one suggested solution I found didn’t work for me.
The Rev Dodgson said:
Anyone here using 64 bit Excel with the solver add-in?I can’t get mine to work, and the one suggested solution I found didn’t work for me.
You can’t get the solver to work?
Peak Warming Man said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Anyone here using 64 bit Excel with the solver add-in?I can’t get mine to work, and the one suggested solution I found didn’t work for me.
You can’t get the solver to work?
No. When I try to install it it says it can’t access the solver.xlam file.
It’s a 64 bit thing.
What does the solver solve?
mollwollfumble said:
What does the solver solve?
Whatever you set it up to solve.
Have you never used it?
mollwollfumble said:
What does the solver solve?
At the moment it is insolvent.
So no-one uses the excel solver?
The Rev Dodgson said:
So no-one uses the excel solver?
Not I.
Nor I.
I don’t use Excel. I use the OpenOffice suite.
The Rev Dodgson said:
So no-one uses the excel solver?
I’ll admit to never having heard of it.
sibeen said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
So no-one uses the excel solver?I’ll admit to never having heard of it.
I’m a bit surprised by that.
Not to say outraged :)
sibeen said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
So no-one uses the excel solver?I’ll admit to never having heard of it.
Tamb said:
sibeen said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
So no-one uses the excel solver?I’ll admit to never having heard of it.
I didn’t know it existed. Thanks.
I can excuse you not knowing about it Tamb, but working engineers should be using it every day, surely?
(We won’t mention that I’ve had 64 bit Excel for a couple of years now, and only just noticed it isn’t working!)
The Rev Dodgson said:
Tamb said:
sibeen said:I’ll admit to never having heard of it.
I didn’t know it existed. Thanks.I can excuse you not knowing about it Tamb, but working engineers should be using it every day, surely?
(We won’t mention that I’ve had 64 bit Excel for a couple of years now, and only just noticed it isn’t working!)
I use Mathcad for that sort of shit. Excel I basically use as a database.
sibeen said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Tamb said:I didn’t know it existed. Thanks.
I can excuse you not knowing about it Tamb, but working engineers should be using it every day, surely?
(We won’t mention that I’ve had 64 bit Excel for a couple of years now, and only just noticed it isn’t working!)
I use Mathcad for that sort of shit. Excel I basically use as a database.
Oh yeah. I forgot you were a Mathcad fanboy.
Peak Warming Man said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Anyone here using 64 bit Excel with the solver add-in?I can’t get mine to work, and the one suggested solution I found didn’t work for me.
You can’t get the solver to work?
yes, and my copy works fine
sibeen said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Tamb said:I didn’t know it existed. Thanks.
I can excuse you not knowing about it Tamb, but working engineers should be using it every day, surely?
(We won’t mention that I’ve had 64 bit Excel for a couple of years now, and only just noticed it isn’t working!)
I use Mathcad for that sort of shit. Excel I basically use as a database.
I’ll just pretend I didn’t read this
diddly-squat said:
Peak Warming Man said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Anyone here using 64 bit Excel with the solver add-in?I can’t get mine to work, and the one suggested solution I found didn’t work for me.
You can’t get the solver to work?
yes, and my copy works fine
Ah, that’s interesting.
Which version of Excel/Office?
I’m sure you will all be delighted to learn that I fixed it :)
The procedure:
1) Try opening Windows “as administrator”. Open Excel (also “as administrator”) and activate solver – worked with no problem.
2) Open Windows with usual account then open Excel as administrator. Solver was still not activated, and trying to activate it gave the same error message as before.
3) Have another look at the long list of inactive add-ins, and note that solver (and only solver) was listed right at the end as “disabled”. Work out how to undisable it (still as administrator), then retry installing, and it worked!
4) Check with opening in non-admin mode, and it still works!
The Rev Dodgson said:
I’m sure you will all be delighted to learn that I fixed it :)The procedure:
1) Try opening Windows “as administrator”. Open Excel (also “as administrator”) and activate solver – worked with no problem.2) Open Windows with usual account then open Excel as administrator. Solver was still not activated, and trying to activate it gave the same error message as before.
3) Have another look at the long list of inactive add-ins, and note that solver (and only solver) was listed right at the end as “disabled”. Work out how to undisable it (still as administrator), then retry installing, and it worked!
4) Check with opening in non-admin mode, and it still works!
Praise the Lord.
Peak Warming Man said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
I’m sure you will all be delighted to learn that I fixed it :)The procedure:
1) Try opening Windows “as administrator”. Open Excel (also “as administrator”) and activate solver – worked with no problem.2) Open Windows with usual account then open Excel as administrator. Solver was still not activated, and trying to activate it gave the same error message as before.
3) Have another look at the long list of inactive add-ins, and note that solver (and only solver) was listed right at the end as “disabled”. Work out how to undisable it (still as administrator), then retry installing, and it worked!
4) Check with opening in non-admin mode, and it still works!
Praise the Lord.
I prefer to call him Bill.
The Rev Dodgson said:
I’m sure you will all be delighted to learn that I fixed it :)The procedure:
1) Try opening Windows “as administrator”. Open Excel (also “as administrator”) and activate solver – worked with no problem.2) Open Windows with usual account then open Excel as administrator. Solver was still not activated, and trying to activate it gave the same error message as before.
3) Have another look at the long list of inactive add-ins, and note that solver (and only solver) was listed right at the end as “disabled”. Work out how to undisable it (still as administrator), then retry installing, and it worked!
4) Check with opening in non-admin mode, and it still works!
Whew. Not an easy fix.
> Solver is a Microsoft Excel add-in program you can use for what-if analysis. Use Solver to find an optimal (maximum or minimum) value for a formula in one cell — called the objective cell — subject to constraints, or limits, on the values of other formula cells on a worksheet. Solver works with a group of cells, called decision variables or simply variable cells that are used in computing the formulas in the objective and constraint cells. Solver adjusts the values in the decision variable cells to satisfy the limits on constraint cells and produce the result you want for the objective cell.
So a constrained optimisation solver. Nice. Do they say what method they use (eg. Nelder-Mead, Simplex, Simulated annealing, Genetic Algorithm, Conjugate Gradient)?
They sort of do say:
> Generalized Reduced Gradient (GRG) Nonlinear Use for problems that are smooth nonlinear.
This would be some variant on Conjugate Gradient. Suitable for smooth problems where the optimum is not near the boundaries.
> LP Simplex Use for problems that are linear.
That’s a straight-forward Simplex linear programming method. Only suitable where the optimum is at a corner where constraints intersect.
> Evolutionary Use for problems that are non-smooth.
That’s not sufficiently specific. Possibly simulated annealing. But Nelder-Mead and Genetic Algorithm are also evolutionary.
moll – I find it quite slow, and for heavy duty work and difficult problems there are probably better solutions (certainly much better documented solutions), but for one-off problems its convenient and easy to use.
The Rev Dodgson said:
moll – I find it quite slow, and for heavy duty work and difficult problems there are probably better solutions (certainly much better documented solutions), but for one-off problems its convenient and easy to use.
You’ll find that some methods are much faster than others. The simplex method is fast, but only works for linear problems. The gradient method is middling in speed, I use it in fortran all the time. The speed of the general evolutionary model will be abysmal.
Now that you’ve got it working could you run a copy of Revelations through it..
TIA.
Peak Warming Man said:
Now that you’ve got it working could you run a copy of Revelations through it..
TIA.
I’ll leave that one to moll I think.