display .dat file as spreadsheet

[Zinnium]

Well, you actually can view it while it is being updates.  Its all in how you code it. Same is true in how you can read from it.

Look, people want to open up their my documents file and see a generated excel book with all the bells and whistles.  They don't want text file, data file, or anything else.  Like my customers simply want and demand to be able to double click and open a fully formatted excel book.  Most of the people who actually operate most software and equipment don't have college degrees, and most are not very computer savvy.  You need to simply make sure that they don't need to think in a real world situation.   The same is true when they want to update excel files that the machine has to read.   They don't want to a convert to text file.... They want to save an excel sheet and not think about it.

[GregFreeman]

So you basically want to your Labview code to act as a macro so while it runs it will also completely format the excel workbook the way you would like?

Message Edited by for(imstuck) on 01-05-2009 04:22 PM

Message Edited by for(imstuck) on 01-05-2009 04:23 PM

[GregFreeman]

Would the report generation toolkit be what you want?

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3178

[chilly_charly]

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Zinnium a écrit:

Look,people want to open up their my documents file and see a generatedexcel book with all the bells and whistles.  They don't want text file,data file, or anything else.  Like my customers simply want and demandto be able to double click and open a fully formatted excel book.  Mostof the people who actually operate most software and equipment don'thave college degrees, and most are not very computer savvy.  You needto simply make sure that they don't need to think in a real worldsituation.   The same is true when they want to update excel files thatthe machine has to read.   They don't want to a convert to textfile.... They want to save an excel sheet and not think about it. 

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Zinnium,

Please consider that people here already know the advantage of having functionnal Excel files. Now, could you please explain how you append data to an existing Excel file (html as you created it) with your method ?

[Zinnium]

I do it in the programming and the user doesn't know how its done.  The users don't care how its done...  they just want an excel file

This is hard for most people to get, but all Microsoft office files that are after 1995 are HTML files.   Its based on the great concept of Microsoft wanting to rule the internet.

You can read and write to them like normal HTML spreadsheets.  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=7sJ&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=html+spreadsheets&spell=1

 Here is 3 files of me making an excel book.  One is the original excel file save in 2003, second is it saved as an html, and the 3rd one is me just me renaming the file type (html to xls)

[Zinnium]

for(imstuck)

Yes, I format it completely in labview.   I have had customers in the past who wanted some old macros they where already using in their current spreadsheets to be in the new auto-generated ones as well.  It makes no since, but it I do want the customer wants since its their money$$$.

You need to read on how to handle the HTML speadsheet to best do this.  There is actually 5 ways to open/read/write an excel file in labview  without doing a file type change that I know of and will work on labview 4.0.1 and above.   The HTML one is the easiest one for most people to do.  I wrote a series of express VIs for myself a long time ago and have been using them since.

Message Edited by Zinnium on 01-05-2009 06:02 PM

[RavensFan]

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Zinnium wrote:

This is hard for most people to get, but all Microsoft office files that are after 1995 are HTML files.   Its based on the great concept of Microsoft wanting to rule the internet.

You can read and write to them like normal HTML spreadsheets.  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=7sJ&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=html+spreadsheets&spell=1

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No No No!  That is not true at all!  Microsoft office files are not HTML files.  They are a Microsoft proprietary binary file format.  If you open a real Excel .xls file in Notepad, you would see that the vast majority of the characters are gibberish.  It looks nothing like HTML.  If you open up your book1.xls in notepad you will see that as well.

I went to your link.  I think you should as well and read it in detail.  It doesn't talk about Excel .xls files being an HTML file.  It talks about the ability to export data to an HTML file and reading an HTML file to import data from it.  This is not the same thing as reading and writing an .xls file.  It even talks about the importing of data from either tab delimited or comma delimited text files.

The exception to this is that the latest version of office came out with .docx and .xlsx files (which I find particularly annoying because of the 4 letter extension, the larger file sizes, and that older versions of office can't read them without addon converters).  Those .---x files are XML.

Message Edited by Ravens Fan on 01-06-2009 12:45 AM