Pulling Data from Excel File

[zeak]

Hi Steve ,

Is there a simple way to pull data from an Excel file like we do with 'INPUT FROM FILE'

I was hoping we could tell it which cell to look at with the R1C1 code.

Cheers,
Zeak

[zeak]

The problem i'm facing at the moment is that when I try to copy from a cell in Excel, It doesn't see the text but instead says the following

'Image: {Width=98, Height=21}'

even if what I am copying to clip board is a number, and doing define Integer %Clipboard%. the integer number stays 0.

[Steve]

Hi zeak

Sorry for the late reply, not sure how i missed this one.

I tried a demo with a simple excel sheet and yeah i get the same as you; something like this 'Image: {Width=98, Height=21}'
At the moment MMM lacks the functionality to interact well with excel with the input from file. Maybe saved as a .csv it could be.
Your probably going to have to run an external script to convert the data to a format that MMM can handle with input from file or something similar.

If you make some progress I'd be interested to see how you go.

[philranger]

Hello!

  Microsoft Office files are really zipped folders containing files, subfolders, etc. and in particular an xml file that contains the data you want.  Not at all easy to access. 

  The "save as .csv" is a good option, copying from Excel is always a bit fishy as it copies a "full object", not just a string.

  A workaround is to do a "ctrl-c", go to another simple application (notepad for example), paste there, reselect the text, and then copy to the clipboard.  I don't know if this is acceptable in your case.

[philranger]

Hi again,

  To go to a specific cell, in the English version of excel, you can type ctrl-g, then where you wanna go (for example ctrl-g b:27). 

So your workaround could be:

-In Excel, ctrl-g, R1C1, enter, ctrl-C,

- "select window by name" to a notepad, a select-all, delete, paste, re-select all, copy (to get rid of the Excel incapacity to do proper ctrl-c)

- Use your clipboard as needed.

In some software, ctrl-shift-v instead of ctrl-v keeps only the text instead of the full object.  I don't know if it works in Excel though...

[zeak]

Hi Philranger,

Thanks' for the advice, what could also help with this is if we could do the string array as talked about in these threads.

minimousemacro.proboards.com/thread/312/extracting-multiple-variables-line
minimousemacro.proboards.com/thread/330/command-string-parse-custom-variables