RE: Exporting reports to Excel

["JK" <johnking@xxxxxxx>]

Douglas,

 If, by "reports", you mean a standard 132-column greenbar document, then
converting it to Excel might turn out to be more annoying than helpful for
your users. Page headings and footing and hard-coded subtotal lines can make
it a real PITA to deal with in Excel because the traditional document
structure just doesn't lend itself to a spreadsheet tool. Ask the users what
the end result should be - if they just want the same information in a
format they can email and store on their PCs, consider converting it to .pdf
instead. If your shop is on a tight budget, Google for shareware CVTSPLSTMF
or CVTSPLFPDF. Also, Spool Factory is inexpensive and has formatting
features I've not seen in other products.

 If your shop is transitioning to electronic output, consider calling POI or
jExcelApi Java classes from your RPG programs. Scott Klement has written
several excellent articles, also Giuseppe Costagliola has a couple of tools
in mcpressonline.com that are a playground of clever techniques. Depending
on how your RPG is written, it can be surprisingly easy to change existing
"O" specs to java calls (use a service program) that put files directly on
the IFS. The files can go directly to the user's *HOME directory, assuming
you are setup for that, or use Javamail to send them directly to the user's
inbox.

JK 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Douglas W. Palme
> Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 3:41 PM
> To: RPG Group
> Subject: Exporting reports to Excel
> 
> We are needing to export some of our reports to excel, I would appreciate
> any feedback from those of you who have accomplished this either with
> rpgle
> coding, third party tools, or something else that might be beneficial to
> us.