I'd like to offer the possibility for users of my app to export to Excel. I don't ever need to read Excel files.
The three ways I know right now is to
make a CSV file, which isn't too great as I'd like to have some custom formatting in the spreadsheet
make an XML file that I don't think people'd recognize as an Excel file
make a template xlsx file, unzip it in the app, do a lot of search-replacing in the files and then zip it back up again
Are there other alternatives? I'm not sure how supported .xlsx files are, and that seems like very much work. Are there any frameworks out there I can lean on, that perhaps even make old-school .xls files?
Cheers
Nik
Some options for you to consider:
1) You may be able to use ooxml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML_file_formats. You may need the "office compatibility pack" on computers with excel 2003 or lower http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5754865.
2) Excel 2000 uses the BIFF file format: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsc.openoffice.org%2Fexcelfileformat.pdf&ei=iDx0TKOhBIqmnQfckKy7CQ&usg=AFQjCNE2w4xyFSoKmvKdsa7O9TMqynYpbA (pdf). You may be able to create simple documents from the spec or based on other info on the web.
Related
I began writing a docx document to do a project of mine.
Recently, I realized that it would be easier to manage that data if it was in a database.
So, I wanted to import that data into MS Access automatically, to avoid copying and pasting the data manually.
Is there anyway to do it? I have only encontered ways of opening Word application via Access. I also know that docx has a XML structure, so I imagine if I can open that structure, it would be easy to do a parser in VBA
There are two basic ways information can be taken out of a Word document and put into an Access database: automating the Word object model using VBA code running in either Word or Access OR extracting the WordOpenXML that makes up the Word document. You indicate you lean towards the second option.
Here, again, there are a number of approaches available:
Use VBA in Word or Access to extract the WordOpenXML of the document open in the Word application user interface.
Use VBA in Access together with non-VBA tools to "crack open" the Zip file and extract the XML.
Use the tools available in the .NET Framework to extract the content of the ZIP file and write it to Access using an OLE DB connection.
I understand your goal is to be able to recreate the document at a later point for printing, so you want to preserve all the formatting. In addition, you want to be able to read the content from within Access.
I believe this will require a minimum of four fields in the Access table:
ID
Title
Text of song
The complete WordOpenXML for re-creating the document
You don't mention (4) in the discussion and problem description, but if you want to store the formatting AND you want to be able to read the content I believe this is necessary. While WordOpenXML is "readable", there's a lot of mark-up in there which doesn't make reading comfortable.
All things being equal, I'd go for either VBA working on the open Word document or the .NET approach, using the Open XML SDK (free download .NET library you can reference in Visual Studio and distribute with solutions).
One important thing to keep in mind is storing the Word Open XML in the database. Unless something has changed in Access, you can't store the ZIP file - you need a "streamable" format. That would be the OOXML OPC flat-file format.
When you read the WordOpenXML from a document using VBA, that's what you get, which is why that would be an option for me. The Open XML SDK doesn't have that option, but there is code available from Eric White's blog for doing this.
When you later want to recreate and print the document it should be enough to stream the WordOpenXML to a file with the .xml extension. Or you could convert it back to a docx zip file (same blog).
MS Word's .docx files contain a bunch of .xml files.
Setup.exe files spit out hundreds of files that a program uses.
Zips, rars etc also hold lots of compressed stuff.
So how are they made? What does MS Word or another program that produces these files have to do to put files inside files?
When I looked this up I just got a bunch of results about compression, but let's say I wanted to make a program that 'wraps' files inside a file without making the final result any smaller. What would I even have to write?
I'm not asking/expecting any source code that does this, I just need a pointer. Is there something you think I'm misunderstanding based on what I've asked here?
Even a simple link to an article or some documentation would be greatly appreciated.
Ok, I'll just come up with some headers for ordinary files and write them along with the bytes of the actual files into one custom-defined file. You guys were very helpful, thank you!
Historically, Windows had a number of technologies to support solutions like this. These were often called Compound Files or Structured storage. However, I don't think the newer Office documents use these technologies. I think the Office file formats are similar to ZIP files with a different extensions. If you change a file with .docx extension to .zip and open it with your favorite compression tool, you'll see a bunch of folders and XML files.
Here are some links to descriptions of different file formats that create "files within files"
Zip file format
Compound File Binary Format (CFBF)
Structured Storage
Compound Document File Format
Office Open XML I: Exploring the Office Open XML Formats
At least on POSIX systems (e.g. Linux), a file is only a stream (i.e. a sequence) of bytes. And you can only grow (or shrink, i.e. truncate) it at the end - there is no way to insert bytes in the middle (without copying the rest).
You need some conventions, and some additional software, to handle it otherwise.
You might be interested in Sqlite, which gives you a library to handle some (e.g.) *.sqlite file as an SQL database
You could also use GDBM - a library giving you some indexed file abstraction.
libtar is a library to manipulate tar archives. See also tardy, a tar file postprocessor.
Is there any way for my app to create a document that will need saved and printed without utilizing some external software? Currently I have a spreadsheet that does a bunch of calculations then a button that runs some VBA to export 2 sheets to a PDF, then it saves and prints it. I want to port this spreadsheet into a .NET app.
I have experience with everything EXCEPT this: how do I re-create these 2 documents that are currently in Excel, without having to utilize Excel? My whole goal here is to get out of Excel...because I hate it, and I'd like to send this app to clients across the country. I really don't want to have to tell clients that they need Excel to use this. I might as well just leave it in the spreadsheet if that's the case.
I'm sorry if this is sort of "nooby", but I'm not sure what the best course of action here is. Should I try to mimic my Excel sheets on 2 hidden forms and save/print those? Should I write some HTML to produce these forms in a browser and save/print from there? Are there any other options here? I'll probably end up saving as XPS if I can find a way to get out of Excel. Would love some pointers if you have any ideas. Thanks everyone!
Edit: a little more info...I don't need help with the calculations, or exporting PDF's. I don't need any help regarding Excel or VBA. The workbook has 1 input sheet where users enter data. The results of the calculations appear on 2 other sheets in this workbook. These 2 sheets are currently exported to 1 PDF using VBA, which is then saved and printed using VBA. These spreadsheets are not "spreadsheets" like you may be thinking. They are actually "forms", for lack of a better term, that the user will never edit after running the macro to export them as PDF's. They contain text, pictures, shapes, etc. Excel is merely the medium currently being used to create these documents. My goal is to build this project in .NET and get us out of Excel, but I'm not quite sure how to reproduce these 2 forms within my app without utilizing Office. Think of them as templates. After the user enters data in my app, it will do some calculations, and the results need to appear on 2 forms that need printed and saved on the user's machine. How do I recreate these 2 forms in .NET?
Of ya, vb.net, winforms (although I could use WPF as I haven't started yet), 4.0 framework :)
Here is what you can do:
Add an empty Excel file into your resources and use it as template
When your program is to save data, you can take that file from resources and save it to hard disk.
Connect to Excel file using "Microsoft.Ace.oleDb."
Save and read data in Excel just as it was a db table - there are plenty examples on the net. Google for it.
For this project you don't need Excel application on the machine.
Now, if your concern is Excel, you don't have to worry. Your clients can use OpenOffice, for example. Or, you can save data in CSV format. CSV is not Excel. You can create your own text format and your clients will be able to read it with the Notepad. You can do HTML/XML combination and have your html page load whatever xml you supply.
Seriously, create a spreadsheet and tell your clients that they can open it with their favorite spreadsheet editor.
So instead of using a third party program or anything fancy , you could just read in the excel or xsl file and spit it out? Just write some code to format the data properly for users... There is a similar question that may help you with a tutorial - Here But this is for java, Are you using c# or vb ? .Net 4.5 ? razor ?
You can create the PDF's from code using tools like iTextSharp. Or use fillable PDF templates and use iTextsharp to fill in the form. You will need a program to print the PDF, I use the Foxit Reader. I'm sure there are some full featured PDF tools out there that include printing.
You can also doing printing from VB.Net but I would guess mixed media documents would be difficult.
Okay guys, I've been having this problem for a few weeks now and I'm getting no-where with it. I have OpenOffice and regular Office softwares. Both produce flawed .csv files, or at least phpMyAdmin can't read neither of these. Yes, I've been trying to change server's settings of uploading, etc. I also tried to contact my web hosting service and they claimed that all the .csv files I've produced are flawed.
Anyway, I'm looking for a way to convert .xls table to SQL. Most of the softwares out there cost money that I don't have. Furthermore, I've seen PHP systems that do just that, so I know this is possible.
No need converted to. sql, you can import directly with phpmyadmin or using tools like navicat for mysql in phpmyadmin go to the option to import, find the file, select the file type (csv or csv loaddata), in part below defines the column separator (if you do not know which opens the file with notepad)
if a very large file using navicat.
Flawed is "defective"?. I assume you have problem with excel, maybe you have defined the same column separator for separating thousands or decimals, use openoffice to open the file
I have some files which need reading using Access / VBA. They are compressed using ".gz" compression. How can I read those files in?
I figure this must be a solved problem but alas can't find anything. Command-line would be one option but it would involve the users of the VBA application having to have particular tools installed. Perhaps there is a library I can just include, which I can then ship with my VBA application (.accdr)?
There are quite a few libraries around, however, probably the most popular is zlib. A nice example using zlib, albeit written in VB6 (which shouldn't be too difficult to convert to VBA) is located here. One nice point about zlib is that it doesn't need registering (i.e. REGSVR*), so you should be able to drop it into the same folder as your DB (or even embed it into the DB then extract it automatically).