Sadly,

I have been told to recreate some filemaker pages in excel.

Stupid, I know.

But... is there an easy way to convert instead of reinventing the
wheel?

TIA

Phil

On 2009-12-18 16:06:09 -0800, Phil <flipspam (AT) cospamco (DOT) ca> said:

ROFL.

If they want reports in Excel, that's one thing. If they want to run
their business out of it, well, they'll be sorry, particularly if they
start to grow. And of course, Excel won't handle any kind of related
tables, such as Invoices with Invoice Line Items.

To get data into Excel, under the File menu, select Export Records,
select the Excel format, and select the fields you want to export. In
FM10, you can just directly export all the fields on the present screen
to Excel with one command, under the file menu "Save/Send Records
as...." Earlier versions or fields not on the layout require the Export
Records step.

You can also script the export to Excel for those who want to produce
reports consistently.
--
Lynn Allen
--
www.semiotics.com
Member FBA
FM 10 Certified Developer

Phil wrote:
There is no easy way. When I get such requests, I usually try to
strongly discourage the idea. Users will find the data much more
flexible if they have the flexibility of moving the data around, which
they cannot as easily do when the spreadsheet rows are specifically
formatted. And I let them know that doing such output will take a
ridiculous number of hours that just aren't justified by the benefits.

But when I am forced to do it, I use HTML tags to format the data in the
desired format. I do this my looping through each record and writing
the data to a script variable with desired HTML tags in place so that
the entire page is formatted as an HTML table. Where sub-summary
headings need to be added, I add that as I loop through the records.
Save the HTML as an .xls document and Excel will open it properly formatted.

Examples of HTML formatting that Excel will recognize includes things
like <FONT SIZE>, <FONT COLOR>, <B>, <U>, etc., and of course table tags
like <TR>, <TD>, <TD COLSPAN>, etc.

"Howard Schlossberg" <howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote


It's often better to tell a white lie and say it can't even be done.
Management tends to be incredibly stupid and rarely knows what it really
wants or why it's doing it ... most of the time it is simply worthless
"paper-pushing" (at best). \

Helpfull Harry )

This would work until someone as smart as you comes along and explains
the truth.

Not all managers are incredibly stupid, they just may lack your
education.

The truth is easier to remember.

Tom

"TomMcIn" <tom_mcintosh (AT) shaw (DOT) ca> wrote

I did say "management tends to be incredibly stupid" ... but I have yet to
actually meet anyone in management who has any real brains or common sense.
(

Helpfull Harry )