Overview

Cosmos leverages the latest technology from Microsoft, and the Cosmos Report Editor is built using the modern Office Add-In framework. This means that the Cosmos Report Editor will work in both Excel Online and the Excel Desktop application. This article covers the specifics of working with the Cosmos Report Editor using Excel Desktop.

Details

Overview

By using Microsoft's Office Add-In framework as the foundation for the Cosmos Report Editor, users can author and edit reports in several different places, such as in a web browser or using the Excel Desktop application, on both Windows and Mac platforms. More information about the Office Add-In benefits can be found here:

Office Add-Ins Platform Overview

Working with Excel Desktop

To edit Cosmos reports using the Excel Desktop application, the user will first check-out the report and edit it so that it is open in Excel Online. From there, the user can then click on the Editing button at the top of the Excel window and then click Open in Excel Desktop.

This will open the report in the Excel Desktop application on the user's local machine. 

The user can leverage the Cosmos Report Editor in their local version of Excel to make any changes that they would like to the report. The user can also use the Preview functionality to run the report in Excel Desktop and the finished version of the report will open in a new browser window in the same way that it does when Preview is used in Excel Online.

Once they are finished making modifications to the report, they can simply close the Excel file and the changes will be saved back to Excel Online. When they return to Excel Online, they will click Resume Editing Here which will show the latest version in Excel Online.

Technical Requirements

To use the Cosmos Report Editor with the Excel Desktop application there are some minimum technical requirements. 

Operating System

• Windows 8.1
• Windows 10
• Windows 11 (or higher)

Microsoft Office

• Office 365 (now called Microsoft 365) version 16.0.13530.20424 or higher
  • This version was released around March 9, 2021

If the user is using an operating system or version of Microsoft Excel prior to the supported versions they will still be able to author reports in Excel Online but will not be able to use the Excel Desktop application.

For more specific technical details, any scenarios in the Microsoft article below that result in the browser used being Internet Explorer 11 are not currently supported.

Browsers used by Office Add-ins