RBLibrary: ExcelWriter

Many of my in-house apps are for summarizing and reporting chromatography data … Typically I create a zipped data package that includes PDFs of the chromatography for each sample produced by the instrument, a PDF summary report I produce using Asher Dunn’s open source classes, and a tab delimited text file version of the summary report for which i assigns .xls as the extension.

Double Clicking on the xls file opens it in Excell (though on one platform you get a wrong format warning). That file is for users who want to add the summary data to their own spreadsheets and/or do more calculations.

That works out OK but I would rather produce actual Excell files that have nice table boarders, columns the right width, alignment etc… While it really would not do much in terms of functionality for the end users, it would just look more professional. Teh end users who get these can either be on PC’s or Macs.

BTW some of the machines these apps run on don’t have Excell on them, so office automation is not an option.

So being the cheapskate I am, I downloaded the free “Excell BIFF Writer” from RBLibrary…

While it does produce actual .xls files, it does not seem to have any cell/column formatting functions built in… so using it instead of tab delimited files with .xls extensions, does not gain me much.

The other option in RBLibray is not free (though it’s certainly not expensive)… It’s Norm’s ExcelWriter.

The description does not tell me if it can do what I need, nor what file formats it supports. Anybody here using it? Does it support formatting? does it work well? What file formats does it support? xls would be nice as the version of Excell would not matter. Is the API easy to use?

(Norm, Feel free to chime in! :wink: )

Thanks,

  • Karen

Karen I only know of three. the two you mentioned and the other one is part of MBS. And the MBS requires an external license for parts of it. I am not 100% sure/clear what is needed for what. Christian can answer that for us.

good luck!

Took a look at that… that license is $199 for EACH platform… Definitely WAY too much for this, as I would have to pay out of pocket and not make any money on it!!!

Hopefully Norm or someone else will provide more info on ExcelWriter… I think i can manage $10 if does what I need :wink:

Thanks

  • Karen

BIFF (at least version 2 like the BIFF writer supports) doesn’t support cell styling

The code I wrote supports a certain amount of styling like borders etc
It writes an excel XML file

Here is an other EcxelExporter from Einhugur

http://einhugur.com/Html/ExcelExporter/index.html

Exports an XML-File, lots of options !

[quote=45028:@Karen Atkocius]Many of my in-house apps are for summarizing and reporting chromatography data … Typically I create a zipped data package that includes PDFs of the chromatography for each sample produced by the instrument, a PDF summary report I produce using Asher Dunn’s open source classes, and a tab delimited text file version of the summary report for which i assigns .xls as the extension.

Double Clicking on the xls file opens it in Excell (though on one platform you get a wrong format warning). That file is for users who want to add the summary data to their own spreadsheets and/or do more calculations.

That works out OK but I would rather produce actual Excell files that have nice table boarders, columns the right width, alignment etc… While it really would not do much in terms of functionality for the end users, it would just look more professional. Teh end users who get these can either be on PC’s or Macs.

BTW some of the machines these apps run on don’t have Excell on them, so office automation is not an option.

So being the cheapskate I am, I downloaded the free “Excell BIFF Writer” from RBLibrary…

While it does produce actual .xls files, it does not seem to have any cell/column formatting functions built in… so using it instead of tab delimited files with .xls extensions, does not gain me much.

The other option in RBLibray is not free (though it’s certainly not expensive)… It’s Norm’s ExcelWriter.

The description does not tell me if it can do what I need, nor what file formats it supports. Anybody here using it? Does it support formatting? does it work well? What file formats does it support? xls would be nice as the version of Excell would not matter. Is the API easy to use?

(Norm, Feel free to chime in! :wink: )

Thanks,

  • Karen[/quote]
    I had the same need a while ago and created a set of classes to produce a raw Excel file with formatting. This set of classes creates XML with an XLS extension that it directly readable by Excel. This was a lot of effort but I really wanted to create a good-looking Esxcel file and the XML format allowed me to incorporate styles and Conditional Formatting.

You can download a complete package of my classes and sample project here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10747116/RealStudioClasses/SimonsExcel.zip

Included inside the zip file is a program that I wrote that will take a created Excel file (saved in XML format) and create the Xojo code to create the file (called RBSourceFromXLS). Both the Mac and Windows versions are included. Create an Excel sheet that looks exactly like the result you want. Save As an XML file (ensure you use XLS as the extension) and load it into the program. Select the sheet that you want to create and go.

If you have any problems contact me.

Oh, by the way, this is free code!

Great stuff Simon. Thank your for sharing.

Hi Simon,

Thanks for that. It looks like it would do what i want and I do appreciate that it was a LOT of work, and you did a good job.

But as a policy I don’t use encrypted Xojo classes if at all possible, and that goes double for free encrypted ones… Future changes in Xojo could stop them from working and you may not be around or have the time to update them.

[quote=45083:@Stefan Cyrus]Here is an other EcxelExporter from Einhugur

http://einhugur.com/Html/ExcelExporter/index.html

Exports an XML-File, lots of options ![/quote]

Works great in Real Studio. I’ve not been able to get this to work in Xojo. AFAIK they’ve not released a Xojo specific update.

Dang. We were planning on using this in a current project!

What problems are you having, Bob? The example projects that come with ExcelExporter seem to build and work fine for me in Xojo.

Dang. We were planning on using this in a current project!

What problems are you having, Bob? The example projects that come with ExcelExporter seem to build and work fine for me in Xojo.

Again with the double posts?

[quote=45088:@Simon Berridge]You can download a complete package of my classes and sample project here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10747116/RealStudioClasses/SimonsExcel.zip [/quote]

Thank you Simon!

[quote=45088:@Simon Berridge]You can download a complete package of my classes and sample project here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10747116/RealStudioClasses/SimonsExcel.zip [/quote]

Thank you Simon!

I have Einhugur’s plugin working in the latest Xojo and in the Web Edition. I only use it to export listbox text to an XML file, but it works! Have you forgotten to include plugin #TypeLib.rbx?

I’m sorry, but for libXL I didn’t get a sweet license deal. It’s $199 per developer and per platform (Mac, Win, Linux).
But I think LibXL does much more on Excel import / export than other tools.
And it can work with older and newer Excel file formats.

+1

I’ve been using it > 1 ½ year now and I’m very pleased with it.

SimonsExcel is excellent for creating Excel .xls files both on Mac and PC

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10747116/RealStudioClasses/SimonsExcel.zip

It write the older Excel 2004 XML format so yes it supported formatting & styling - but new versions of Excel don’t open it properly any more :frowning:
I have to revamp it to write the newer office XML format

Hi Norman,

SimonsExcel does great job on both PC and Mac.

Absolutely no problems on Mac, the only issue, I would not call it a problem, is that on the PC when the file is being opened a message comes up stating that it is not the real format. So I click “Save” then the file is opened with the data that is to be expected.

If anyone one wants a project that I wrote to test it out I can give a link.

Maybe they can see the issue on PC and solve it.

Lennox