I hope I am doing this in the correct manner, I don't know what else to do, I've been shoved from pillar to post with all the usual Microsoft 'help', the remote assistance was comical and the lady on the phone gave me a number to ring which was the one I was calling her on! Any real help would be much appreciated!
I have created a table in a stand alone version of Excel 2013 (Windows 8.1 64bit) and after adding PowerPivot to the ribbon I attempted to create a data model by clicking in a cell within the table then clicking 'Manage'.
Below is the error message that keeps appearing
"We couldn't get data from the Data Model. Here's the error message we got:
The type initializer for 'Microsoft.Analysis.Services.XmlaClient' threw an exception.
Configuration system failed to initialize.
Root element is missing. (C\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\config\machine\config)
Root element is missing."
When I close this error another appears with a details button, when clicked shows:
============================Error Message:
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Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
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Call Stack:
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at Microsoft.Office.PowerPivot.ExcelAddIn.InProcServer.CannotUpgrade(GeminiWorkbook geminiWb, WorkbookConnection wbConn, String& message)
at Microsoft.Office.PowerPivot.ExcelAddIn.InProcServer.LoadSandboxAfterConnection(String errorCache)
at Microsoft.Office.PowerPivot.ExcelAddIn.InProcServer.LoadSafeSandboxAfterConnection(String errorCache)
at Microsoft.Office.PowerPivot.ExcelAddIn.InProcServer.LoadOLEDBConnection(Boolean raiseCompleteEvent, String errorCache)
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I have reinstalled Excel and Powerpivot with no change in the results