In previous papers, U. Feldman, J. F. Seely, and A. K. Bhatia [J. Appl. Phys.56, 2475 (1984)] and A. K. Bhatia, U. Feldman, and J. F. Seely [At. Data Nucl. Data Tables (in press)] have calculated atomic data and gain coefficients for ions of the Ne I isoelectronic sequence. Their calculations of electron impact excitation rates were carried out in the distorted wave approximation. They did not include the effect of resonance excitation, i.e., dielectronic capture by a Ne‐like ion followed by autoionization leaving the Ne‐like ion in an excited state. In this paper, we use the recent calculations of this process by B. W. Smith, J. C. Raymond, J. B. Mann, and R. D. Cowan [Astrophys. J. (in press)] to explore the effect of resonance excitation on gain coefficient calculations for the ion Fe XVII. We find substantial differences (factors of about 1.3–3) between gain coefficient calculations with and without the inclusion of resonances at low temperatures. However, these effects are not important at the temperatures considered by Feldman, Seely, and Bhatia for Fe XVII.