Re: Spool File to Excel

[John Ross <jross-ml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would consider writing a file out just for Excel also, or use the JAVA 
POI to even write the excel file.
http://www.systeminetwork.com/resources/clubtech/index.cfm?fuseaction=ShowNewsletterIssue&ID=19277 

or since most of a my programs (or a package's programs) are a lot alike 
I would look at writing a generic program (with some input parameters, 
to handle the few differences in my layouts, like what line does the 
detail lines start on for one)  to read the spool files and pull out the 
header and total lines (usually have the word total, or asterisk(s) on 
them). This would not handle all spool files, but I could modify it for 
the reports the generic part did not handle. Even if you have to write a 
program for each report (because you do not have the source code, or do 
not want to modify a package) I prefer to write a program once instead 
of changing the Excel file every time. I prefer programs over VBA since 
the programs are on the System i (as400) and backed up. 

Paul Nelson wrote:
> Why don't you modify the print program to also output to a data file? Each
> record in the file can contain the data needed to be imported by Excel
> through the CA plug-ins available to Excel