StorageEvent does not work in Excel for Windows

Question

As some existing threads suggest (eg, one, two, three), current Dialog Box does not provide an API to send regularly messages from the host page (eg, task p

Answer 1

I had similar issues communicating between apps. In my testing, Excel Online storageEvent works because the communication is between browser tabs of the same "instance". With Excel for Windows, 2 add-ins are in separate browser "instances"; which don't communicate storageEvents. Worse yet was Office for Mac (WebKit); which did not communicate storageEvents and also could not read storage changes from the other app unless they were restarted -- I believe this is because the storage values were cached for the instance (not written to disk and not visible to the other instance/app).

So, I believe Excel Online could use StorageEvents, Excel for Windows would require polling (e.g. check every second), and Excel for Mac may require a server-based solution, such as WebSockets.