I'm creating a program in VB.net that does the following:
At a high level I receive a file in email, put the attachment in a monitored folder, import the text file to excel, format the excel, and then email the excel file to a list of recipients.
Here is my plan:
Completed: Outlook VBA to monitor all incoming email for specific message. Once message is received drop attached .txt file in a specific network folder.
Completed: (VB.net) Monitor folder, when text file is added begin processing
Not Complete: (VB.net) Import text file to Excel
Not Complete: (VB.net) Format Excel Text file. (add in a row of data, format column headers with color/size, add some blank columns, add data validation to some of the blank columns that allow drop down selections)
Completed: (VB.net) Save file.
Completed: (VB.net) Send file to list of recipients.
Obviously the items above that are not complete are the bulk of the work, but I wanted to get some advice on what some of you think would be the best way to approach something like this. The import and formatting of the file are causing me some problems because I just can't decide what would be the most efficient way to do this.
What I've thought of so far:
The way stated above. Import to excel -> format
Having a template excel that contains all of the formatting already done for me and attempting to transition the data to this document (no clue if/how I can do this). Is it even feasible? Have the template already created and then import the text file to a new excel file, then transition that data to the excel template?
Something I thought about, in terms of formatting the document, was to record a macro of me doing all of the formatting that I'm going to need and then attempt to convert that macro into my vb.net code, but I'm not sure if that will work. I will need to verify that the text file comes in the EXACT format every time correct?
I really appreciate any advice/suggestions that anyone is willing to give.
You will want to use http://epplus.codeplex.com/
It allows you to create an Excel file from scratch, without having to start Excel itself. Automating Excel will make the process slow and it lacks robustness (Excel process can hang or not close properly).
In addition, using a .Net library allows you to run it on a server or so where no Excel is installed. (Next step would be to inspect the mailbox via POP, IMAP or the Exchange API, so that part doesn't have to be run on a client machine either)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/kh3965hw(v=vs.100).aspx
You can also just use the Interops from MS to interact with Excel, Outlook, Word, etc. They're not difficult at all to use. I'm not familiar with CodePlex, so that may be a better route or an easier one. I just wanted to provide you with an alternative.
With Microsoft Office 2010 Interops you can not generate Office files from .net applications anymore.
You can manipulate data from existing Excel files so you need templates(your 4th point). Then Excel allows you to query some databases. You may be able to simulate one with your folder, otherwise I suggest to convert your .txt files into some databases. (3rd point)
If you do use an older version, you can crate your Excel files by loading them into an instance of Excel and manipulating them as you wish.
By the way I supposed your attached files would have some sort of format.
If you want to manipulate Excel files, I can recommand you the NPOI library found on CodePlex. It has several advantages over OLE-automation:
NPOI is not dependent on a specific Excel version.
Excel (or any other Office component) need not to be installed.
It is faster.
It works with both .XLS and .XLSX files.
We are using a third party software called excel writer. May not be what you are looking for becauseit needs to be license, but it is very fast and the clients does not have to wait for a chart or a data output. Because we have that tool, have not try anything else.
Related
I want to know whether there is a way to connect a Fillable PDF document and excel sheet. I know this question may be little open ended. But I have been searching a lot to find out if there is a way to do it, without much success. My requirement is I want to connect a Fillable PDF with an excel sheet, so that whenever we fill the PDF document, the excel sheet automatically populates.
I am not sure whether this is possible or not. If it is possible, can anybody tell me a way to do that? So that I can search on it and figure it out?
In the olden days, it was possible to set up a direct connection, using ODBC (and the ADBC object in the PDF). This has, however, been abandoned a few Acrobat versions ago.
The most direct connection would be based on SOAP, but it requires Acrobat; it does not work with Reader.
All other ways of communicating with a database/spreadsheet are asynchronous, meaning that you have to initiate the process from your form.
You can use the form to create a tab-delimited file which you then can import into your back end, or you can submit data to a server which then communicates with the back end. Or, as it has already been stated, you can control Acrobat using VB (or Applescript), and get data out by this way.
I have two local excel files on my hard drive. Both have Macros to achieve certain goals. But after all being done the end result is that after i click a command button from one excel file (lets call it 'A') the data gets transferred based on a macro behind that command button to the other file (let call this one 'B') in a certain format.
All this works great. The source file 'A' is accessible by everyone to enter data, but the destination file to maintain data integrity is read only but a macro is able to write into it. For obvious reasons, both file are on a shared folder so data can be entered one file and transferred to another by everyone.
Now I want to be able to continue with the same functionality but now on a sharepoint or onedrive. Unfortunately I am unable to do so.
I am not sure what are your exact requirements, however I think you can use SharePoint lists with SPD workflows to meet your requirements instead of using excels.
Whenever business users need data in excel they can always export them from list.
There is one more easy way where you can let users enter data in excel however it will be stored in SharePoint list.
I want to make an excel file which would do the following steps:
Delete all the excel files from the downloads folder except for the one latest downloaded file.
Make a copy of that excel file names as "Data.xls" and system makes a "Beep" sound
Repeat the above mentioned two steps every 15 minutes
I can do this in Visual Basic but unable to implement that in Excel Macro...
Please help.. My promotion depends on that :-)
Set a reference to the Microsoft Scripting Runtime. The images below shows the classes available in the Object Browser. I usually use this for file-related tasks in VBA. I did some research & the Microsoft Scripting Runtime is standard on Windows so everyone should have it
I need to find a way to automate the process when a user uploads a microsoft project file to a web application I already have created. The process will need to basically use the save as from project to save into a .csv file so I can use this to import the data to an SQL database (this is needed for custom reporting we already have set up using SQL). I need to automate this process because I will be receiving tons of project files, and if the process is automated the users will then be able to instantly see results.
Basically, is there any way to create or run an automated process that will save these project files as .csv files? Even if the csv files are not formatted correctly, I can find a way around that, just need to first get them into .csv files.
Thank you.
edit - the only way i could think of this is to follow the instructions listed below, but
I would then need to automate a process to open the file and hit save so this works... any other suggestions?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/projectprofessional2010general/thread/eea4ca15-0a0b-4c07-9989-87536b961385/
edit 2 - also looking into ways using Microsoft.Office.Interop.MSProject but not finding any luck.
edit 3 0 now using mpxj - the only issue I am having is the following listed below. Converting their example to vb.
Private Shared Function ToEnumerable(ByVal javaCollection As Collection) As EnumerableCollection
Return New EnumerableCollection(javaCollection)
End Function
the error is with EnumberableCollection - visual studio is not picking it up as a valid type - anything I am doing wrong or should substitute?
If you aren't wedded to using MS Project itself to extract data from the project files, you could consider using the MPXJ library. This would allow you to write a simple utility to open the MPP files you are given, extract the data items you are interested in, and write them directly to your database (or an intermediate CSV file, as required). MPXJ comes in Java and .Net flavours, so you can use your preferred language to do the work.
Jon
p.s. Disclaimer: I maintain MPXJ
I have an excel file which is auto generated by third party software..and its readonly file and its data constantly keep changing online.
now i want to use or read that data in my vb.net application whenever its changes take place in excel file automatically.
please help me..
Cody's right. No question, but I'm guessing you're looking to do something along these lines.
First, you'll need to pull down a copy of that XLS file (sounds like it's online at a website somewhere). To do that, you'll need to perform a pretty normal HTTP get or use whatever API the website provides to pull the file down.
Save the file locally, then open it and read it using EXCEL AUTOMATION. Just google excel automation for loads of examples of opening a worksheet file, reading cell values, and closing the file.
There's other options too such as the OpenXML api from Microsoft to allow you to read the contents of XLSX files directly without using excel automation, so that may be a possibility. not enough in the original post to know which would work best for you.