RE: Easiest and most functional way to convert selectedspoolfilesinto Excel

[Don <dr2@xxxxxxxx>]

Dude,

you need to think like a knuckle dragging bean counter.  They see a report, 
they want it in excel, they will go to the moon to get it in excel (they'll 
go to Mars if it's THE GENERAL LEDGER... :)  )

Some times it's faster and easier just to give them a utility that rips a 
splf into a .xls or .csv and let them play than do add it to the heap of to 
do's... :)

(sarcasm intentional :)

Don in DC

--------------------------------------

At 08:43 AM 4/25/2006 -0500, you wrote:
> What is the advantage to converting a spooled file to Excel as opposed to
> simply converting the data to excel instead?  I guess I am thinking like a
> programmer and not a user on this because to me it seems much easier to work
> directly with the data as opposed to a pre-existing report which will then
> have to be parsed and formatted to fit into Excel.
>
> Obviously I am missing something here.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cassidy, Alan
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 8:28 AM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: RE: Easiest and most functional way to convert
> selectedspoolfilesinto Excel
>
> CPYTOIMPF does indeed output just one column. There are a couple of vendor
> products out there that also promise to convert your spool file into CSV
> files but one product I checked out once did the same thing. (I don't think
> it was one of the vendors who offered products hereing).
>
> There is "heavy lifting" like Vernon said, is "getting the data out" from
> the spool file, because there are your inevitable title lines and column
> headings. Then sometimes you get extra little lines in between, variable
> numbers of lines per record, and so on.
>
> But with all that, some new report programs I've had to do were a lot easier
> to do by writing code to extract it. A good commercial product could
> automate almost all of this I think, and would generally come as part of
> another software product, like report distribution, etc.
>
> --Alan
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of PaulMmn
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 8:40 AM
> To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: Easiest and most functional way to convert selected
> spoolfilesinto Excel
>
>
> Did anyone mention CPYTOIMPF  (check spelling)...  this command will
> copy a flat file to a CSV format file and put it in the IFS folder of
> your choice.  CSV is readable by Excell.  CPYTOIMPF is free; comes
> with OS/400.
>
> --Paul E Musselman
> PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
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