Re: Looking for IDL code to read Excel spreadsheet

[jmcfee(at)dres.dnd.ca (John McFee)]

<9ij05q$2j68$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Defence Research Establishment Suffield
Keywords: 

Thanks to everyone for their help. I'll export as .csv files. The less fooling 
around with MicroSoft, the better!

John McFee

In article <9ij05q$2j68$1@agate.berkeley.edu>,
 mperrin+news@arkham.berkeley.edu (Marshall Perrin) writes:
...
|> > I use data from Excel all the time, but I always export them to a .CSV 
...
|> > Alternatively, you could study one of the files with a hex editor to figure 
out
|> > where the data that you want actually starts and how the files are 
structured, and
|> > then use binary reads.  Good luck -
|> 
|> Don't even think about trying to do it in binary - .xls files, like .doc and
|> the rest of the MS Office file formats, are in an extremely complicated 
format
|> called DocFile, which basically is an entire file-system-in-a-file, complete
|> with FAT tables, directory structures, and balanced red-black trees wrapped
|> around all the actual spreadsheet data. You *don't* want to have to write a
|> parser for that mess in IDL. Stick with the CSV export - fast and easy.
|> 
|>  - Marshall

-- 
Dr. John E. McFee  
Defence Research Establishment Suffield
Box 4000, Medicine Hat, AB Canada T1A 8K6
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-- 
____________
Dr. John E. McFee                         | John.McFee@dres.dnd.ca
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