export from filepro to an excel file

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2006, Walter Vaughan wrote:
>Dennis Malen wrote:
>
>>The only problem we have with multi and comma delimited is that if we 
>>are transferring a number such as "37.50" excel picks up the number as 
>>"37.5". If we send "37.00" excel shows it as "37".
>>
>>We know that we can go into excel after the file is created and reformat 
>>the column as a decimal. Time is money and we don't want to have to do 
>>this.
>>
>>Does anyone know of any way to overcome this problem.
>
>Then flip the problem around. Have your spreadsheet request the information 
>for preformatted cells rather than pushing the data.

The last time I dealt with this type of problem it was exporting data from
our accounting system to spreadsheets (OpenPKG.org mostly although I played
with M$-Excel in Office 2004 for Mac some as well).  I fought with it a
fair bit before deciding there Had to Be a Better Way(tm).

Rather than deal with with the import problems, my final solution was to
create a simple mysql table with the proper columns, insert the data into
the mysql with a script on the SCO OpenServer box, the use OpenPKG's data
sources to import into the spreadsheet.

I create a tab-delimited file then run this script:

use xferchecks;
delete from csllc;
LOAD DATA INFILE "/tmp/xferfile.sql" REPLACE INTO TABLE csllc;

I don't know much about Excel so I don't know its capabilities in
interfacing with databases.  I do know that I demonstrated OpenOffice.org's
spreadsheet at a local Apple OS X users group office applications SIG, and
the people who were using Microsoft Office didn't think they could do that.

Presumably one could do much the same thing with FilePro, given a proper
ODBC or JDBC interface to the FP server.

Bill
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