Gruss Excel Race Status field not populating

[routus]

I have researched the forum and it seems clear that I am not the only one who is/has experienced issues with Race Status, so I'm wondering if any one has found a definitive answer?

I am using Gruss Betting Assistant linked to Excel through the COM service.

The relevant worksheet cell is labelled Race Status and is located in AA4 on both linked market sheets. During live racing, the cells beneath that heading remain blank throughout the race.

This has now been observed across multiple markets, including:

races starting on time;
delayed starts;
races progressing from pre-off to in-play;
races completing normally.

The neighbouring Result field in column AB does populate after the race, so the Excel link itself is active and other market-state information is being received.

What I need to establish is:

Is the Race Status column expected to populate when using the Excel COM interface?
If so, what values should appear and at what stages of the market lifecycle (I have read the table in the help section)?
Does it require a particular Gruss setting, worksheet layout, refresh option or Excel-link configuration?
Is the field available only with certain market types, API modes or Gruss versions?
Is there another reliable Excel cell or COM value that indicates the actual race start or confirms that a race has moved in-play, rather than relying only on the scheduled off time?
Is there a documented way to identify that a race is delayed, and by roughly how long?

The purpose is automated bet timing. The automation begins monitoring shortly before the scheduled off time, but it must continue monitoring through any delay and act only while the race remains pre-off. A reliable live market-state signal is therefore essential.

At present, the verified behaviour is:

E2 changes to IN PLAY;
F2 can show CLOSED;
AB Result populates after settlement;
AA Race Status remains blank.

I have tried setting up new profiles, clearing everything related and starting over and anything else I can think of - without success, and this is the only stumbling block I have left to resolve. Are there any known issues when Race Status is used alongside other VBA code, am I missing something really obvious, or is this a genuine issue?

Any help or confirmation from someone using a similar Excel/COM setup, or a detailed explanation of what the Race Status field is intended to do, would be much appreciated.

Thank you - PMs are welcome.

[GaryRussell]

There is no known outstanding issue so you have probably seen posts where they just hadn't set it up correctly or there were API issues at the time.

Have you enabled the setting in general preferences? See screenshot.

race_status_prefs.png (106.05 KiB) Viewed 11 times

[routus]

DOH!

No I hadn't Gary, I hadn't noticed that was there and had only enabled it in the extra columns selector .... now I feel stupid!

Thanks very much for taking the time to answer.

Paul