I've been asked to add export to Excel into an app. I'm looking at Scalabium's component but also thinking about FastReport. Anyone out there using the Excel filter? If so is it any good?

Roy Lambert

Roy,

I'm using FastReport , including xls export, as well as Scalabium's
components.
What are you going to export, is it data only or  formatted reports?
For simple data exporting I prefer Scalabium, but I also have exporting to
excel enabled with fastreport for all my reports.
Exporting reports to excel works very well, as long as we have some care
aligning the reports objects, having in mind that they will have to fit an
excel grid.

--
Fernando Dias
[Team Elevate]

Fernando


Its for someone who believes his customers want the report in Excel rather than as a pdf and "knows" they won't accept a pdf

My current system (based on TMWPrintObject) will adjust columns and wrap text so that the report fits onto A4 (if to big for portrait it uses landscape) and it would be nice to continue that. I know I can do it with FastReport but not sure with Mike's stuff. Are you using the virtual database engine or what?

Roy Lambert

Roy

> I've been asked to add export to Excel into an app. I'm looking at Scalabium's component but also thinking about
FastReport. Anyone out there using the Excel filter? If so is it any good?


It's maybe not the tool for this problem but I really like using Flexcel (the TMS excel thingy).  It really comes into
its own when you need "fit to page" type reports and as the formatting is all done in excel the output is always superb.

John

John


I might agree with you apart from the fact that I'm busy taking the TMS components out of my app. In general terms I find them to heavy, difficult to manage, and awkward to debug.

So far I've only removed two - glowbuttons and AdvDBGrid - my app has lost c1Mb from the exe, runs a bit faster and gives me less grief.

I'm about to start work on the pagecontrol which will only leave the stringgrids, progressbars, menus, officegroupboxes, officecheckboxes, dbplanner and htmllabels (I think).

The stringgrids may stay even though there are a lot more features than I want.

I'm sort of lucky as a hobbyist if it takes 3 calendar weeks to write a replacement for the glowbutton (which no longer glows but is very pretty) who cares - its not stopping me earning money.

Roy Lambert

ps I'll be interested in your views on my ol line manual - demo in the binaries.

Roy

> I might agree with you apart from the fact that I'm busy taking the TMS components out of my app. In general terms I
find them to heavy, difficult to manage, and awkward to debug.
>
> So far I've only removed two - glowbuttons and AdvDBGrid - my app has lost c1Mb from the exe, runs a bit faster and
gives me less grief.
>
> I'm about to start work on the pagecontrol which will only leave the stringgrids, progressbars, menus,
officegroupboxes, officecheckboxes, dbplanner and htmllabels (I think).
>

"Only"

I'm not a huge fan of component suites myself, and I think TMS in particular can be a bit of a mish mash.  After having
altered a page based tabular report in reportbuilder for the nth time (moving lines to insert/delete extra rows and
columns) Flexcel allows me to write code to produce the numbers and someone else can make it pretty!

> Roy Lambert
>
> ps I'll be interested in your views on my ol line manual - demo in the binaries.

I've had a look.  I am struggling a bit as the db stuff (eg right click/display all help items) is creating a edb error
#600 cannot create file c:\users\roylam~1\appdata\... The system cannot find the path specified.  Looks likethis leads
to access violations and index out of bounds errors.

John

John

>I'm not a huge fan of component suites myself, and I think TMS in particular can be a bit of a mish mash. After having
>altered a page based tabular report in reportbuilder for the nth time (moving lines to insert/delete extra rows and
>columns) Flexcel allows me to write code to produce the numbers and someone else can make it pretty!

I was thinking of just using the export capabilities of their AdvStringGrid which will do basic savetoexcel I think.

>> ps I'll be interested in your views on my ol line manual - demo in the binaries.
>
>I've had a look. I am struggling a bit as the db stuff (eg right click/display all help items) is creating a edb error
>#600 cannot create file c:\users\roylam~1\appdata\... The system cannot find the path specified. Looks likethis leads
>to access violations and index out of bounds errors.

Thank you - I'll get that sorted tonight. All to often I fall for that one!

Roy,

> Its for someone who believes his customers want the report in Excel rather than as a pdf and "knows" they won't accept a pdf

You are lucky, in my case they want both excel and pdf, as well as good looking reports for printing .

> ... I know I can do it with FastReport but not sure with Mike's stuff.

I only use Mike's components for importing and basic data-only exporting.
For all the rest I use FastReport.

>Are you using the virtual database engine or what?

No, I considered that at first, but I gave up, it wasn't worth the extra effort of keeping it updated for EDB and DBISAM releases (I use FR with both). I only use TfrxDBDatasets getting data from TEDBQuery or TEDBTable, and I'm very happy with this design. Its simple and yet very powerful, and along with TfrxDesigner i can even give my customers the ability to customize some of the reports - customized  invoice forms, for example.

--
Fernando Dias
[Team Elevate]

John


I've hopefully fixed things

Roy Lambert

Fernando / John


I've just bought FastReports. Even though it was cheaper from the distributor than fastReports themselves it was good to see that there wasn't a $1=£1 conversion.

Now waiting for the licence key

Roy Lambert