Re: Tools to generate XLS files with sql: Beware of data beginning with an equal sign

On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 2:08 PM, Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Apparently it thought it was a formula and the rest of the column
was not conducive to that.

Certainly not all utilities will behave like this. But it's definitely
something to keep in mind. The worst is when you are trying to build a
CSV and the leftmost column is labeled "ID".

This is an issue with such utilities versus the granularity of coding it
yourself.
No joblog, etc.

Utilities for generating Excel files *could* if they so chose, either
make use of the error and logging mechanisms built into the operating
system, or provide their own meaningful, localized error messages.

If you're saying that most utilities don't do these things, I'm not surprised.

John Y.