Hi FM freaks

Did you know, that it is fairly easy to integrate the graphing ability of Excel into FM ?! All is done by the DDE execute commands. Though hardly looking for, unfortunately, I could only find very little information on this.

Now I am asking you for information or a list of DDE-Execute commands to control Excel via Filemaker.

Below, you find a list of all thos commands where I was able to use them successfully. Can you extend this? or send me another list? or recommend a book? or...

Joska

SERVICE -> THEME -> COMMAND -> Comments

1) EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [select("R1C1")] -> selects a cell within the opened Excel document in row 1 column 1

2) EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [select("R1C1:R5C5")] -> selects a range of cells within the opened Excel document beginning with row 1 column 1 to row 5 column 5

3) EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> hallo -> inserts the text "hallo" into the selected cell in Excel.

4) EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [select("Chart 1")] Selects the corresponding chart

5) EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [COPY()] -> copies what ever has been selected before. This can be a (range of) cell(s), or a graph, or ...

6) EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [PASTE()] ->Self explanatory, this pasts in, what ever is stored in the clipboard. The only issue one should remember is, that formulas copied from Excel are pasted in as formulas with the updated cell addresses. If you want to paste data derived from an Excel calculation, you have to make a small workaround...

7) self-explanatory are the commands...

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [NEW()]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [QUIT()]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [QUIT("FALSE")]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [CLOSE("TRUE")]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [CLOSE("FALSE")]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [OPEN("c:mypathmyfile.xls")]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [bEEP]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [sAVE.AS("c:mypathmyfile.xls")]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [Formula("=TODAY()","R1C2")]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [WINDOW.SIZE(310,255)]

EXCEL -> SYSTEM -> [run("mymacro")]

and finally, a command to the OS

FOLDERS -> AppProperties -> [ViewFolder "C:","C:",5)]

I would greatly appreciate if you could send me some infos on further DDE execute commands.

Thanks

Joska

Good luck with your search. I did a huge project about 3 years ago integrating FMP and Excel. I had a terrible time finding any information at all. It's all very cryptic.

My solution was copy data from FM (copy all records) and then run a simple DDE to open the Excel file which then ran a Macro on startup which pasted the info into the cells and then performed whatever function. It gets a little dodgy with different OS & Excel versions, but that was then.

What on earth...?

Never heard of DDE commands! Is this an XP thing? I'm running Mac OSX 10.4.

I'd love to be able to generate excels from my data, complete with formulas and such, ready for the end user.