It's my first question here so please be easy on me..
I'm trying to create an excel report from a dataset i've created in MS Access as part of a MS-Access based large project.
This project has to run on many machines and to avoid reference errors i use late-binding.
My problem is that when i try to create (from Access) a Timeline using the "Slicercaches.add2" method my code fires error "5". As a test i've created the timeline from Excel-vba and i found that if i use the "XlTimeline" constant it works, but if i use the "2" value not . Is there a way to use the Xltimeline constant inside Access-Vba without reference to excel libraries??
Thanx in advance
MF
First off, welcome to Stack Overflow. Without seeing your VBA code, answering your question would mostly be speculation. As a common practice, it is always beneficial to show the code you're working with (same concept as a picture is worth 1000 words). With that being said, working with Excel objects (or any other office application) requires that you import the necessary libraries. With the Excel library imported, you can essentially do anything to an excel file using the Excel object. Is there a particular reason you would like to refrain from using the Excel library?
I have a system with an Excel spreadsheet template file which is used for invoicing. I would like the user to be able to click a button on an Xpage, which will then open the spreadsheet and enter the latest invoicing data in Excel. I don't mind if Excel is either the application on their machine or on the server, but my preference would be the application locally on their machine.
I've looked into Xagents, as I feel this is probably the answer. I know they can be used to create Excel but I have not been able to locate any mention of opening an Excel file, and entering data into specific cells.
Is this possible?
EDIT: you can use Apache POI for editing and creating Microsoft Office documents. This is a java project which gives you a handle to office documents and this can be used using java.
A good starting point can be the blog of Christian Guedemann from webgate:
http://guedebyte.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/documents-and-spreadsheets-with-xpages-building-the-kernel-part-ii/
(end of edit)
The only way I KNOW and tried to write data from Notes to Excel is exporting the data to an HTML page and setting the Content Type accordingly (e. g. as described here (there are a lot more resources available for taht):
http://www.dominoguru.com/pages/developer2010_xpagexlsexport.html
I am not sure if this is of help but it seems that this project can help you:
http://www.openntf.org/internal/home.nsf/project.xsp?action=openDocument&name=ZK%20Spreadsheet%20for%20XPages
As far as I can see this project can load Excel files from XPages - and then it should also be possible to edit the files.
Besides that the only solution I can think of is a Notes Agent that is called from the XPage. This agent can then run in background and do all the excel stuff. After running, the XPage can show a link to the Excel file. Actually this is the solution I would consider to implement - but maybe others step in with better answers here.
You don't want to introduce a dependency on Excel in your application -- wouldn't work with an iPad front-end. Rather have a look at the ZK Spreadsheet, it will fulfill your needs.
However if you have to have Excel, then you need a roundtrip solution: load the Excel from an URL (probably generated by an XAgent (?) and save it back. The saving back part is the tricky one. Normal HTTP doesn't allow that. What you need there is a webDAV capable server. Watch out for a project on OpenNTF soon (just clearing IBM legal) that provides webDAV.
However the ZK Spreadsheet looks much better for your needs.
I have a sample database at the following URL --> http://www.nnsu.com/nnsusite.nsf/%24%24OpenDominoDocument.xsp?documentId=B65507CB2DE15B3286257986005F061D&action=openDocument
Download the APCC.nsf. This will allow you to create/read a new EXCEL spreadsheet and then stream the resulting file to the requesting browser. There is not need to have EXCEL or office installed on the Server.
THe examples create a new workbook, but you can also store a "template" on the server or in a notes document and use it as a starting point and then save it to a document or stream it to the requesting browser.
With Apache POI you can read/write to a spreadsheet using data from the notes document the process is initiated from.
My employer is considering installing OpenOffice.org's suite of Office products instead of using Microsoft Office. I've written several advanced applications in Access and Excel, and I'm trying to figure out what will and will not be compatable with OpenOffice.org.
Specifically, what do I need to do to have Calc (OpenOffice.org's version of Excel) read and execute VBA in macro's and tie macro events to button clicks?
Also of note, I'm using the MySQL Connector from within Excel to dynamically update data in the spreadsheet. What might I need to do to preserve data connectivity to our MySQL server?
Thanks
As far as I know, OOo Base can connect to an mdb file to the extent that it can open tables and queries. I think anything else - forms, reqportes, macros VBA and native - would need to be redeveloped.
I don't believe that OOo Calc can read or execute VBA: it has its own dialect of Basic, which has a variant syntax. It doesn't, as far as I can tell, support the concept of Class, for example. Some work appears to be occurring, however, see the OpenOffice Wiki for more information. Right now, I'd say you should be planning on a careful and complete rewrite.
Regarding the MySQL connector - I'd say that's the least of your worries...
On the plus side, you're likely to have real job security for a year or two while you get everything ported!
I recently discoverd go-oo which seems to be able to achieve your task.
Does anyone know of resources that can help me export simple contents of a GridView to a native Excel 2007 format (i.e. the OpenOfficeXML format).
I've already seen solutions like Matt Berseth's, and in fact I have been using that for a while, but it comes with an annoying warning produced by Excel 2007 as documented here stemming from the fact that a native Excel file is not generated; rather it is HTML.
My initial research shows that, at the core, xlsx files are zip files, but I have no idea how to produce these or what goes in them.
Any suggestions (or tutorials) would be greatly appreciated.
CarlosAg has an ExcelXML writer which works really well. It isn't a native excel 2007 formatted file, but it will be readable in excel 2007.
You will need to write a little method to do the exporting manually, the API is very straight forward though. You will create a sheet object, then a row object, then a cell object. You can just loop through your data and output it. The examples on the site are pretty decent.
I prefer using Microsoft's own Open XML Format SDK. It is free, it is released by Microsoft and it creates real .xlsx files.
You can find the reference documentation here, as you can see, it is pretty straightforward to use.
SpreadsheetGear for .NET can read and write native xls and xlsx files and is easier to use (takes less of your time) than other solutions because it has an Excel like API so you don't have to learn anything about Open XML.
You can see some live ASP.NET (C# and VB) Excel Reporting examples here and download an evaluation version here.
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC
Our product has the requirement of exporting its native format (essentially an XML file) to Excel for viewing/editing. However, what this entails is having a dependency on Excel (or Office) itself for our product build - something that we do not want.
What we have done is export the data from our native format to a csv file which can be opened in Excel. If user selects an option to open the generated report as well, we (try to) launch Excel application to open it (ofcourse it requires Excel to be already present on the client system).
The data for most part is flat list of records.
Is there a better format (or even a better way) to handle this requirement? This is a common requirement for many products - how do you handle this?
Excel versions, both 2007 and several previous, have native XML formats. 2007, obviously, is XML by default, and earlier versions have the ability to save as XML. This SO question deals with the issue. I'd guess a little inspection would give an idea of what's required. I don't know if a XSD/DTD exists for older versions, but a little creative Googling might yield something.
As other people pointed out, it is reasonably easy to generate Excel XML files. You can do this in multiple ways. For example:
By creating a template Excel XML document, and then using XML DOM to stuff your data into the template, or
Converting the template Excel XML into an XSLT, and then simply passing your proprietary XML as input to XSLT.
I'm using ExcelPackage to create spreadsheets in one of my side projects. Works pretty good, but (at least the version I'm using) its a bit limited when it comes to styling and calculations.
ExcelPackage lets you create OOXML docs (.xslx files) that are natively compat with 2k7, but you can download a plugin for previous versions of Office from MS.
We export our data either using Excel objects (COM based code) on client side or CSV file (usually on server side, but can be used on client side too). And we allow copy data from grids in simple html format, what can be pasted into Excel without problems.
For one customer we even had to export data [from sql stored procedure] into csv-like tab-separated format, but named file like xxxxx.xls - this way excel opened that file in more correct way than csv file. Ugly hack, but worked well.
CSV is most compatible format (no dependencies on external applications or libraries), but customers don't like it. Maybe we need to incorporate some XLS export code, this way all users will be happy :)
If .csv isn't formatted enough, you could create a template in Excel, and use a little bit of VBA code to import the CSV and format it appropriately. This way your app is only concerned with generating the .CSV, and will use the same .XLS for each export.
If you're careful, you should be able to get this to work with most versions of Excel seamlessly.
With Perl there are several modules that can be used to produce .xlsx files without requiring an Office installation. Among those :
https://metacpan.org/pod/Excel::Writer::XLSX is the most well-known, with support for many Excel features like colors, formatting, etc.
https://metacpan.org/pod/Excel::ValueWriter::XLSX (I'm actually the author) has less features but is optimized for fast writing of large amounts of data
If you are working in Java, Checkout the POI project from APACHE.
http://poi.apache.org/
Simple, nice, complete, powerful.
We started with Office on the server, but that's not very nice. We had to kill processes that hung, and had quite a bit of a performance dip. We thought about putting it on a different machine, but didn't bother after trying and using Aspose (commercial). We don't have a very large number of simultaneous users, but complex documents. Simple ones can be handled easier with csv.
I've used FlexCel Studio for a couple of projects now. It's very functional and fast. 100% managed code, no dependencies. Sounds like you'd use the "Reports" feature which allows you to define an empty report template in Excel, then pass datatable and volia, it's populated with your data.
TMS Software
We use a combination of OleDB and Interop. We found that Interop was much faster and used less memory, but it's a pain for compatibility issues, especially when using different language installs of Office.
OleDb has the advantage that you don't require Excel to be installed on the client machine. Both Interop and OleDb support multiple sheets (tables) per workbook which you cannot do with csv.
If you're using C# or VB.Net, and your data is in a a DataSet, DataTable or List<>, then you can use my free "Export to Excel" class.
It uses the free Microsoft OpenXML libraries (so you don't need to have Excel on your server), and lets you export your data into a "real" .xlsx file with just one line of code, eg:
DataSet ds = CreateSampleData();
CreateExcelFile.CreateExcelDocument(ds, "C:\\Sample.xlsx");
All source code is provided on the following page along with a demo project, completely free of charge (and popups !)
http://mikesknowledgebase.com/pages/CSharp/ExportToExcel.htm
Hope this helps !