I've been working on a similar project, what I've found is that DDE will NOT
trigger a Change Event in Excel. You need to use a Calculate Event to
capture data, or a third party solution. Two very interesting third part
tools I've found has been, SPINAKER ALERTS, triggers on any change, about
$150.00 per licence, and BROADCASTER <http://www.duxus.com.br>
http://www.duxus.com.br. Broadcaster will give you realtime updates between
two excel  sheets living on two different computers over a network. $50.00
per machine. I'm dealing with 8 to 10 items times 45 to 90 machines. Using
the change event generally means an excel page for each item you want to
capture. Not too bad for 6 items or so but when your talking about 450 to
900 item a page per item is pretty overwhelming.