We set up a pivot table connection to an OLAP cube last
month (September 15th). Today(October 6), when the user
went to refresh the data so that she could change the
selections, she could not connect to the OLAP server and
got the following (not very helpful) error message: Unable
to Open Connection - Unspecified Error.

Another computer with a non-Administrative user id, but
cube rights where I just installed pivot table services is
also getting this error message.

I am still able to connect through pivot table services,
but I have admin rights on the OLAP server and Analysis
Manager installed on my machine. We are not aware of any
changes to the user's machine during that time period.

Lack of Service Pack 3 for Analysis Services causes the
same error message with Analysis Manager.
Should I try a Microsoft Office rebuild/repair?
Anything else I should try?

all the machines w/Analysis services should have Service Pack 3 for Analysis
services installed. On the other (client)machines (even if they do not have
anything from SQL Server or Analysis Services installed, just Ms Office,
etc) install PTSfull.exe from Analysis Services SP3 download if you have not
done so.
Ptsfull.exe is provided there in the folder \Msolap\Install\Pts. Ptsfull.exe
installs the PivotTable Service files and Microsoft Data Access Components
(MDAC). It is made for client machines and contains necessary drivers.
It is important that MDAC version is consistent on all the Analysis Services
client and server machines.

I assume you are not trying to establish http connection to Analysis
Services - (if so, you'll need to make sure you have Enterprise Edition of
SQL Server license)

Regards,
Ilona Shulman
Senior Development Consultant, DBA
SSE Inc
http://www.sseinc.com



"Diane Blackwood" <dblackwood (AT) kirkland (DOT) com> wrote

I ran the Office Repair on each of the machines and that
fixed the problem.