Great thread, and Rod — really nice work building a Mac-native solution using the TM1 REST API and VBA. That takes real initiative, and it's clear you've hit on a pain point that a lot of us in the TM1 community have felt for years.
Xavier makes an excellent point about IBM working toward bringing Planning Analytics for Excel to Excel Online. That will be a welcome addition when it arrives.
In the meantime, I wanted to let the community know that this capability actually exists today. Our product, PAXcel™, is a browser-based Excel Web Add-in built specifically for IBM Planning Analytics / TM1. Because it runs as an Office Web Add-in, it works everywhere Excel runs — Windows desktop, Mac desktop, Excel Online, and even Excel on iPad. No VMs, no Parallels, no COM add-in, and no local installation required.
Here's what PAXcel delivers right now:
• True Cross-Platform Support — runs natively on Windows, Mac, Excel Online, and iPad from a single add-in. Mac and Windows users get the same full-featured TM1-in-Excel experience without any platform-specific workarounds
• PAXCEL.GET — retrieve individual cell values from any TM1 cube, similar to DBRW but with batched API calls that consolidate thousands of cell requests into a single REST API call for dramatically better performance
• PAXCEL.VIEW — snapshot an entire cube view directly into a worksheet as a spilled array from a single formula, with full element selection and filtering
• PAXCEL.SEND — write values back to TM1 from Excel, enabling true two-way planning workflows from any platform
• Interactive Cube Viewer — a built-in drag-and-drop cube viewer with drill-down, filtering, and export capabilities, all within the Excel task pane
• Modern Authentication — OAuth 2.0 and SSO integration with per-user TM1 security, so every user sees only the data their TM1 security profile allows
• Zero IT Deployment — cloud-hosted add-in with no version compatibility issues between Excel and PAfE, no desktop installation, and automatic updates
• Full Planning Analytics Cloud and on-premise TM1 support
For Mac users especially, this eliminates the need for VMs, Parallels, or workarounds — and Windows users benefit from a lighter-weight, always-current add-in that doesn't require PAfE installation or IT coordination.
PAXcel connects directly to the TM1 REST API — it has no dependency on PAfE at all — so it works today without waiting for IBM's Excel Online release timeline.
If anyone is interested in a demo or has questions, feel free to reach out to me directly:
Rick Stevenson
Happy to answer any questions here in the thread as well. Great to see this kind of innovation and discussion in the community!