Can TMG write a report in Excel format?

[ShaneMBaker 0]

Gidday

 

I'm confused! (Not an uncommon event, I'll grant you.)

 

According to sources such as tmgtips.com, I should be able to select Excel as a file format to write reports - but I can't.

 

What am I missing here?

 

TIA

 

Shane

Canberra

[Roy_Delos_Reyes 0]

Gidday

 

I'm confused! (Not an uncommon event, I'll grant you.)

 

According to sources such as tmgtips.com, I should be able to select Excel as a file format to write reports - but I can't.

 

What am I missing here?

 

TIA

 

Shane

Canberra

 

Some reports, but not all, can be written to a comma delimited format which can be imported to excell- mostly the "list" types. What type report is it that you want in excell format?

[John Cardinal 0]

Also, some output formats are not available in the "Silver" edition of TMG. I don't know if that affects Excel or not.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Further, it's listed as "Microsoft Excel" rather than as "Excel", so you may be looking in the wrong place in the list. Also, the file types displayed are controlled by the options in Preferences > Program Options > Reports, so it may be turned off.

[Alison 0]

Also, some output formats are not available in the "Silver" edition of TMG. I don't know if that affects Excel or not.

 

It is an option for output in the silver edition for list of reports, though I haven't tried it yet to double check it works, but you will at least see it.

[ShaneMBaker 0]

Gidday

 

Thanks everyone.

 

I was trying to send a list of events to Excel. Comma delimited wouldn't be an issue, but the fact is that for that report, it's not an option.

 

However ... (my brain started briefly just then) I just tried reading a text file into Excel as a fixed column width delimited file and it worked - though the memo fields appear to be truncated.

 

Worth persisting!

 

Many thanks folks.

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

Gidday

 

Thanks everyone.

 

I was trying to send a list of events to Excel. Comma delimited wouldn't be an issue, but the fact is that for that report, it's not an option.

 

However ... (my brain started briefly just then) I just tried reading a text file into Excel as a fixed column width delimited file and it worked - though the memo fields appear to be truncated.

 

Worth persisting!

 

Many thanks folks.

 

Both Microsoft Excel and ASCII delimited with Comma are listed as output types in the List of Events report for the Gold edition; the Silver edition lists Microsoft Excel in the list of Reports per Alison above and should have ASCII outputs. Have you checked the list of Reports in Preferences to make sure you have enabled those file types? That is in File >Preferences > Program Options > Reports > Preferred output types.

 

I think the TMG memo fields output to Excel may be truncated to around 250 characters.

 

Virginia

[MMj 0]

Hi,

I hesitate to enter into this discussion after my debacle with an exploding Tag form the night before last, that I then couldn't replicate later, but I played with the Excel option for a while after I saw this thread. The Excel output option is of considerable interest to me, because in conjunction with the power of the flexibility of the listing reports, it gives you the power to send a large quantity of raw data from TMG out to a format where it can be massaged and viewed in a large variety of ways.

 

But here is what happened when I tried the Excel output option.

 

I used the "List of People" report for my test because it is a simple columnar report that offers a large number of data fields to choose from. I chose a very simple report format containing only 4 columns, which were basically surname, given name, date of birth and date of death. I executed the report only for the current focus person.

 

First I printed the report to the screen and that worked fine, with the 1 detail line that I was expecting.

 

Then I directed the output to a Word file, using the "Word for Windows 2000 or later" selection in the file type dropdown box. My PC runs under Windows XP Media Center Edition and has MicroSoft Office 2003 Professional installed on it, which of course includes both Word and Excel. TMG created the Word file flawlessly and asked me if I wanted to open the document in Word to look at it. It looked just as expected.

 

Then things got exciting when I performed the same actions for Excel. I directed the output to an Excel file, using the "MicroSoft Excel v5 XLS" selection in the file type dropdown box. When I hit the Print and Save button everything seemed well for a short time, and then the whole world exploded. First I got an error message: "operator/operand type mismatch O NOSENSI". Then I got another error message: "Function argument value, type, or count is invalid O NOSENSI". You also get an Abort/Retry,Ignore dialog which lets you abort the program. Unfortunately, however, it left me with the report definition form open and with no way to close it, and I can't get back to the main TMG menu to shut the system down. So the only way to close the application from this point was through the Windows task manager. I tried it 3 separate times using slightly different report columns and/or people, and got the same result each time.

 

I did not conduct this test with any of the other TMG reports, mostly because I'm not very happy about having to shut down the application through the Windows Task Manager every time the report fails.

 

There were no related messages in the vfp7err.log file. However, there were several pertinent lines in the error.txt file:

 

2006.08.17, 00:29:37 1925Unknown member ROLOCALE. 0 MARKLANGUAGE

2006.08.17, 00:30:10 1925Unknown member ROBOOKMARKMAN. 0 FRMCHART5.UNLOAD

2006.08.17, 00:30:13 1925Unknown member ROTMPOBJ. 0 FRMREPORTOPTIONS.UNLOAD

2006.08.17, 00:47:33 107Operator/operand type mismatch. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 00:47:45 107Operator/operand type mismatch. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 00:47:46 12Variable '' is not found. 0 R_LOP

2006.08.17, 00:52:15 1925Unknown member ROLOCALE. 0 MARKLANGUAGE

2006.08.17, 01:00:06 107Operator/operand type mismatch. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 01:00:36 11Function argument value, type, or count is invalid. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 01:01:09 11Function argument value, type, or count is invalid. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 01:01:11 12Variable 'X' is not found. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 01:01:13 107Operator/operand type mismatch. 0 NOSENSI

2006.08.17, 01:01:14 12Variable '' is not found. 0 R_LOP

2006.08.17, 01:02:22 1925Unknown member ROLOCALE. 0 MARKLANGUAGE

 

Am I doing something wrong here, or is there a problem with the Excel output functionality?

 

Any suggestions here would be gratefully appreciated, because the ability to save output in Excel format is of great interest to me. Many of the people that I communicate with are Excel "weenies" and the ability to generate output in this format will be of great benefit.

[Vera Nagel 0]

I used the "List of People" report ...

Then things got exciting when I performed the same actions for Excel. I directed the output to an Excel file, using the "MicroSoft Excel v5 XLS" selection in the file type dropdown box. When I hit the Print and Save button everything seemed well for a short time, and then the whole world exploded. First I got an error message: "operator/operand type mismatch O NOSENSI". ....

 

Mike,

 

this issue had already been reported and should probably be fixed within a future release of TMG.

 

The key seems to be the sortorder of the output file - I guess you sorted it on surname, right?

If so e.g. sort it on birth-date and the output should run without any difficulties.

[MMj 0]

Hi Vera

 

Thanks for the information, and I can work around the problem through the TMG-Word-Excel solution until the problem is fixed.

 

And in the future, I'll make a better keyword search before I report problem issues.

 

Thanks