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Lertap 5 is currently running on these versions of Excel for Windows: 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, and 2010. On the Macintosh, it runs under OSX with Excel X and Excel 2004. It will not run with Excel 2008 on the Mac, nor will any other Excel-based application which makes use of Visual Basic for Application (VBA) code modules / macros. (A new version of Excel for the Mac, Excel 2011, emerged at the end of 2010, and it has VBA support; however, as of the date above Lertap 5 had not yet been modified so as to work with Excel 2011. Also note: Excel X and Excel 2004 will not work with OSX Lion.)

The comments below are general in that they apply to all users, no matter what version of Excel they may be using.

But, please NOTE: we do have some very specific comments just for users of Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. They may be found here.

The most common general problem has to do with how new users try to get started.

Understandably, many users want to get going immediately, without having to read any documentation. This can lead to a number of problems -- new users really ought to take the "Cook's tour" as the jumping off point for their Lertap career. The complete version of the Cook's tour is found at the start of Chapter 2 of the manual. An abbreviated version, one that's a bit quicker to access for users with a good internet connection, is found under the "Getting Started" topic of the online help website. A fresher, interactive version of the Cook's tour may be found here.

If you send us an email asking for help, the first thing we'll ask is: Have you taken the Cook's tour? 

Another problem, the "Subscript out of range, error 9" problem, arises when users have tried to save their Lertap workbook with a new name. Under Excel 2007 and Excel 2010, the Lertap workbook is Lertap5.xlsm, while under all other Excel versions it is Lertap5.xls. Saving the Lertap workbook with any other name will not work; it'll lead to one problem or another.

Macintosh users: we have found the "Subscript our of range error" will appear when Excel does not have enough memory to run in.  At times the error message says something like "Run-time error 9".  If this happens to you, try increasing the amount of memory allocated to Excel; to find out how to do this, use Mac Help, searching for tips on 'memory allocation'.

There have been some operational problems related to how users have configured their version of Excel.  Lertap makes use of "macros", that is, modules of computer code.  In order for the macros to work, they must be loaded when Lertap starts up.  This process is ordinarily automatic -- one hardly knows it's happening.  However, often Excel has its security level set so that macros are not loaded; in such cases Lertap appears to load okay, but won't have its toolbar showing, and, in this case, Lertap simply does nothing except display its standard worksheets (which are beautiful, to be sure, but that's not the point here).

How to solve this macro security problem?  Easy. Ask Excel's Help system. Ask for help on macro security. One must use Excel's Tools / Macro / Security options to set macro security at either medium or low. Then Lertap has to be closed, and started again. (Note that these comments do not apply to Excel 2007, the newest version for Windows. Excel 2007's approach to macro security is substantially different.)

The conditional standard error of measurement calculations, CSEM, introduced in Lertap Version 5.6.3, are only appropriate when test items are scored as right/wrong, and have just one correct answer. Lertap checks to see if this is the case, but this check will sometimes fail -- when one or more *mws lines have been added in the CCs worksheet to alter the scoring for some items, Lertap should (but doesn't) produce a warning to say that its CSEM1 and CSEM2 figures are not accurate. (The CSEM3 figure will still be okay, but CSEM1 and CSEM2 will be in error.)

Having an empty, or almost-empty first column in a Data worksheet is not good; try to avoid this. If your first column is empty, Lertap may or may not run, depending on its mood on the day -- seriously, an empty first column may produce strange results, such as Excel reading just the first few rows of Data, or, possibly, none at all.

There are limitations handling Lertap's longest system messages under Excel 97, and under two Macintosh versions: Excel 98 and Excel 2001.  Lertap has some messages which are longer than 255 characters, and these may be truncated by Excel 97, 98, and 2001.  In general, this is not too severe, but as time permits we're trying to pare back on those long messages.  (A "system message" is something Lertap flashes up whenever it has some special communication for users to read.  Sometimes these are instructions, sometimes they're comments, and at times they are error messages.)

Excel 97 and Macintosh Excel X have posed some graphics problems -- there is a well-documented problem concerning the number of charts which may attach to Excel 97 workbooks, and it seems to also occur with Macintosh Excel X (through Service Release 1).  Lertap users with Excel 97 will frequently find that Lertap will not make item response charts for all items -- this is an Excel problem.  There's a fix for it: click here to read more, but please note: this is really a very small problem -- if you can't get Lertap to work, this is not your problem.  The Excel 97 charts limitation will be noticed only when Lertap is running, and then only when users request item response charts for a subtest which has more than 30 items.  To date we have no word of a fix for this problem for users running under Macintosh Excel X.

Some users have encountered problems when trying to use very long *col lines in their CCs worksheets.  This lead to the discovery of a formerly unrecognized Excel limitation: there is an effective limit of 255 characters in a cell.  The problem was investigated, and a solutions document made available as a Word file: ExcelColumnLimitProblem1.doc. Note that this problem does not occur with Excel 2007, nor does it crop up with Excel 2010.

There has been a problem or two related to running on computers which use non-English versions of Windows or Excel. One of the most common matters has to do with 'international' or 'regional' settings. On some computers, Lertap may crash (stop running, producing some sort of error message from Excel) if the decimal separator is not a decimal point, and if the thousands separator is not a comma. To see if this may be your problem, try using Excel options to set the decimal separator to a decimal point, and the thousands separator to a comma. Then try running Lertap again. For more about this problem, please send an email message to support@lertap.com.  

By all means send us your comments and requests for help: support@lertap.com.  Remember that when we hear from you our first question is likely to be: Have you read the Cook's tour (Chapter 2 of the manual)?