Running Revit 2025.4 and Dynamo 3.3.0
I’m unable to get Dynamo to read Excel using any of the OOTB nodes, Bumblebee, or Crumple… The node at the top of the screenshot is some Python script, which does seem to work, but can anyone tell me why none of these nodes work? Reading/Writing Excel is critical to 90% of the work I do with Dynamo… 
The second screenshot is the only warning with any potentially useful content…
I’ll be honest, I’m hoping for some suggestions of things to check, as clearly something isn’t right at my end…
You could try uninstalling and reinstalling MS Office!
see this topic
FYI @solamour @emrullah.yildiz @achintya_bhat I suggest addressing this conflict as it is making the ‘fix’ for the previous excel nodes not viable. Likely also worth discussing how we integrate dependencies to prevent conflicts.
Bingo. It was the latest Archi-lab package that was causing hte issue, rolled back to an earlier version and all good for now at least. Hopefully Konrad can get this resolved going forward as I’ll be just as lost without that package as I would without the excel nodes!
Thanks all for you assistance.
submit an issue here might get his attention. i see him solving issues lately, so a pretty active repo.
Issues · ksobon/archilab
Hi Keith - The Excel nodes have proven to be somewhat brittle over the years as automatic updates from the Microsoft side have had a tendency to break things
For that reason, we’ve put in, and are encouraging people to use the OpenXML variants to access read and write to XLSX files. Have you used these before? They are more stable across time.
Hi Sol,
Yeah, the OpenXML is generally my go-to but even that wasn’t working in this instance. I have had a lot of trouble with the Excel nodes over the years and Bumblebee is still generally a good option when all others fail, but even that was failing here!
Frustratingly though, the version of Archi-Lab I need still causes this issue…
There is a conflict with the OpenXML nodes and Archi-Lab which prevents using them when you have Archi-Lab installed.
In Keith’s case he is also blocked from using the old excel nodes.
Sadly I believe that the only work around is removing Archi-Lab as the issue persists across all versions for all supported builds, or to not use Excel.
That’s fairly catastrophic… I’m sure I’m not the only person that relies heavily on Archi-lab nodes and the use of Excel.
This does however serve to highlight the challenges with using Dynamo in a production environment, what works perfectly fine in one version, fails in the next… This is a MASSIVE headache for me right now. Fingers crossed Konrad can sort it from his end.
Which version did you role back to and got it to work?
I think it was 2022.212.3222 but it didn’t have the node I was looking for… anything else I tried broke the Excel nodes.
For Archi-Lab to work you need a version where the last two numbers match your Revit build. The version you noted is for Revit 2022.
As far as I know there are no supported Archi-Lab builds which won’t create the conflict. The two tools (Dynamo or Archi-Lab) are going have to align on a common version which will mean coordination and alignment and the end users keeping on the right update should either version update, or one of the two tools will have to use an alias/fork of the dependency which is in conflict.
I’m intrigued as to what’s changed in 2025 that’s causing the problem and what it is about the archi-lab package in particular…
I know we’re digressing off topic here, but as a ‘user’, I do find it curious that this package has been a stalwart of Dynamo from the outset. Is it the whole package that’s the problem or just certain nodes within it? How likely is it that the issue can be resolved with a ‘sensible’ amount of work?
I think that for all of us who depend on the fabulous work that’s done by those who provide these packages, we shouldn’t forget the basic work that goes into maintaining them - it’s not just a case of fire-and-forget.
I was away for a few month due to accident and came back to this…all worked fine in 2022 and 2023 but when I came back the office has all migrated to 2025 and somehow all workflows that used Archi-lab and excel are not working… I am not sue if it is the same issue but here is what I am getting in 2025 with all the 2025 publiched Archilab packages … I retested the same on my personal 2022 Revit with Archlab 2023.213.1722 and it works
Here’s what happened, in a nutshell.
Around Dynamo 2.8 (I think - it was July of 2021 but I can’t track the specific release version) Dynamo started adding the OpenXML based nodes for excel interaction. They have a dependency on OpenXML, a library for working with particular data structures.
Archi-Lab has used a version of that same library since… well a LONG time ago, though I am not sure what for or when.
At first there were no issues as the versions were aligned, or close to it anyway. But to keep pace with other tools Dynamo and or Archi-Lab update to new versions of the library as they both see fit. And as .NET will only let one version of a library be loaded by an application, and once loaded it cannot be changed without restarting the app. This is known as a dependency conflict.
Sometimes the conflict between versions is ok as there aren’t any API changes. This was the case early in the split, and apparently until 2024. Sure, it’s looking for version N but finding version N+X, but the library hasn’t updated enough to matter as the books the applications need are where they have always been.
But in 2025 the library changed enough that the books are in new spots - the API calls don’t align to what they were before. My guess is this stems from the .NET changes which would likely require one or both tools to update the dependency version and now we are too far apart. So when Dynamo goes looking for the OpenXML book where it should be it isn’t finding it, as we are in Archi-Lab’s version of the library not the Dynamo one. The load order could be changed to always load Dynamo core nodes, but that would break Archi-Lab instead of the OpenXML nodes.
Likely not much work on Konrad’s end, but that work isn’t part of his job, and he has a lot more fun stuff to do in his personal life than he did when Archi-Lab was underway. The Dynamo team could likely integrate the Open XML library in a different way so as to harden the system against this type of issue, but that opens up different problems and shouldn’t be done in a hurry. They also can’t back ship int Revit readily (need an update to 2025 that is major enough to push a new Dynamo build, which isn’t likely as we are nearing the half point of it’s lifecycle), so the fix is easier to deploy to users via the package.
To expand, it’s only since the advent of Dynamo’s switch to .NET8.0 for the Dynamo 3.0 version and above that we even have the possibility of doing dynamic Loading/Unloading of DLL’s. It wasn’t possible in .NET4.8, the platform language Dynamo is largely build on top of up until Dynamo 3.0.
We have not yet started this work, but have it on our radar to do; theoretically it will resolve issues like this 
