GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 592401
support for Excel XML import/Export
Last modified: 2018-06-29 22:26:53 UTC
did you know that Excel XML spreadsheet Export is really easy? most of it is boilerplate. try making an excel spreadsheet with some cash-formatted numbers, and some strings (always put a ' in front in the spreadsheet). At least do export. import may not be quite so simple because of all the text surrounding a field, and real excel spreadsheets may contain gaps in columns which tweaks the format a little. (actually, with financial data there shouldn't be any column gaps, should there?) strings may or may not contain an attribute, depending on whether or not they had a ' in front of them in the spreadsheet, and when exporting I find it easier to just assume it's there. with strings, the only characters you have to worry about are & (comes out as &) < (comes out as <) > (comes out as >) " (comes out as ") and that is really easy to handle in C. I could attach a sample xml spreadsheet file soon.
Created attachment 141209 [details] excel 2003 data formats example xml spreadsheet file attached sample excel 2003 spreadsheet file (Excel 2003 is the format most everybody uses) like I offered, with many example number formats and some string formats. note that most of the formatting is done with XML styles of some sort, and not done with the data. the formatting is separated from the data, which simplifies output. for export purposes, all the styles handling can be done in the header boilerplate. the footer boilerplate probably won't look any different. you output one line of xml per cell. very simple. it is very similar to writing a row of HTML table, just with more text surrounding the cell content. each row begins with <Row> and ends with </Row> each on its own line. simple.
Created attachment 141211 [details] list of characters that need to be substituded before outputting to XML file. Excel 2003 xml spreadsheet. this is an xml spreadsheet example of what happens with certain characters when they are put in Excel and written to an XML spreadsheet file. the characters are > < & = " % and by the way, = and % do not change. and by the way, you can double-click on an excel xml spreadsheet file and it will open up the spreadsheet if you have excel.
Thank you for taking the time to explain your enhancement request. The described enhancement is a good proposal and would be an advantage for the software. However, as a volunteer-driven project with limited resources, the GnuCash developers have their own priorities about the features which are most likely being worked on in the near future. In that sense, the current GnuCash developers decided not to work on your proposed feature in the next 4-6 months. In case you would like to have this feature implemented in any case, you have the following option: 1. Start to program in gnucash yourself - see http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development . 2. Convince someone who is not yet part of the GnuCash team to join the team and implement your feature. 3. Pay some of the GnuCash developers to implement your feature - ask on the mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org in that case. Thank you very much. Feel free to file other bugs or enhancement requests that you find, though.
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