Is there a way to make Microsoft Excel support a new file format for input and output - as a selectable file format in the "Open File" and "Save File" dialogs? Maybe by writing an addin or something like this?
My goal is to use Excel to read and write tabular data stored in a custom format - let's say JSON but it's not decided yet. I know that I could write an application that does the conversion from my custom format to the Excel format, but that's explicitly not I am looking for.
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I have an XML file generated by EasyPower (electrical software). If I open the file in Excel it comes up as a series of formatted sheets like the image below. It appears this way without any prompts or dialogs.
I’m creating a Power Query routine that can extract the data from the sheets. Unfortunately when I use the Power Query wizard to select the XML file as a source, it doesn’t see the data as sheets, but rather a table with columns of Tables, seemingly an infinite number of levels deep. Digging through them I’m unable to clearly see the data. This is not a very good approach.
A work-around is for me to manually open the XML file with Excel and save it as XLSX, then it’s easy to work with the data in Power Query. I know a VBA script could be used to this but my question is, is there a way for Power Query to open an XML file and interpret the layout the same way that Excel does? This way would allow my script to also work within Power BI.
Edit: A sample file has been requested. This link will provide a very simple example containing two worksheets when opened in Excel. EasyPower_Test_Schedule.xml
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but I was wondering if there's any standard for having Excel validation across files? What I mean by that is something like:
XSD for XML: https://www.w3.org/XML/Schema
JSON Schema: https://json-schema.org/implementations.html
CSV Schema: https://digital-preservation.github.io/csv-schema/csv-schema-1.1.html
Excel: ??
Or is the solution for this usually "Export it to <this_format> and validate it using those tools?" How this this usually done, or it's not?
Excel is a proprietary tool with its own data format. It can export a spreadsheet/worksheet (not the same thing) into various other formats.
For data interchange, the most common Excel import/export format is CSV. There is a standard for CSV but it does not specify any validation of the field names or types. If you want that, you will need something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Format_Description_Language.
I have an Excel file that has multiple graphic content (a normal excel file).
I am reading this file using POI API in java. I am able to convert the file to PDF table using iText jar.
But, the whole format is not copied into the PDF. (e.g., merged cells come into one column, and other formatting or settings are all gone).
A simple pdf table is created like below.
However when I convert with MS Excel and save as PDF i get the below output which has all the formatting details and looks perfect.
How do i retain the same format as in excel? I have done some googling on this and got some methods like OpenOffice API but all of them convert files on local machine. What if I send my tomcat build to client machine where OpenOffice is not installed ? Need some solution for that. Any help would be useful.
I have a file of extension *.qub that I would like to read into Excel. The file contains spacecraft instrument data. The file has two parts, a SFDU-defined text header followed by binary data.
Ideally, we would like the user to be able to access the files using Excel's built-in File-->Open and File-->Save functionality to import/export this *.qub format.
What is the best way to create a custom file reader/writer in Excel?
Thank you!
is there a workaround to use the cfdocument tag to save a page/file as an excel sheet instead of a PDF file?
I already have a process set up to make pdf files and email them out and would like to give my customers the option of getting an excel file instead. It would be nice if I could reuse the code I already have instead of having to rewrite it in POI or something like that.
The type of data witihn a PDF is not usually the same type of data that makes sense for Excel. That being said, there are multiple other ways to create Excel spreadhseets.
In ColdFusion 9, it's native. Just use the cfspreadsheet. In CF8... well, it looks like you have POI. So use that. ;) Ben Nadel also has a nice wrapper for POI so you can consider that too.
The thing is - you will not be able to go from CFDOCUMENT to a spreadsheet since it is really a different type of data.
In ColdFusion 9 use the cfspreadsheet tag and/or spreadsheet functions. That creates a real Excel file.
In ColdFusion 8 and below the easiest way is to use the html table > Excel hack/trick. Put your data in a standard html table, save them in a file with a .xls extension and email them to your users. When the user opens the file Excel will convert the html table to an Excel spreadsheet. You could also send the content to the browser by adding at the top of the page. With this method make sure that you are only sending an html table for best results.