Column headings Excel

[Phillip Holmes]

I have to create an excel report and need to know if it is possible to set the column heading so excel shows the HUMAN NAMES to the users and not the internal field names.

I use the "Save/Send Records as - EXCEL" to get the data out to excel.

Thanks for any help.

[Fenton]

Short answer: No, Save as Excel can only use the field names (or not).

Longer answer 1: Yes. Create a fake record, setting fields with the names, then delete it. I ain't gonna even talk about this. It's an ugly hack.

Longer answer 2: Yes. You can use Export XML, with an xsl stylesheet to use whatever names you want as the first row, of a comma-delimited file, which you can then open with Excel. There are likely some example files of this here, or post back and ask. (I don't "push" xml/xsl unless someone professes an interest in learning how to do it, as it requires some learning, though not much for this.)

Longest answer: Yes, but Yikes! Set up the named columns in Excel, with a row of data. Save as Excel 2004 XML (at least that's what it's called on Mac Excel 2008). Write an xsl stylesheet to transform FileMaker data to that. There are examples on FileMaker's XML page (somewhere). Lots of work. And the new MS XML "standard"? almost impossible.

Edited July 22, 2008 by Guest

[Phillip Holmes]

Thank you for the feed back, I will start to look at the XML stuff - Must confess I don't like that type of stuff as I find all the tags hard to follow once you get a lot of information on a page.

[velefther]

if you have an example of how to use the XML style sheet...please share. i am also trying to export from filemaker to excel and have many column names that need to be changed. a sample would be very helpful! thanks.

[Fenton]

Here are two examples xsl stylesheets that you can use to Export XML (with the xsl stylesheet), producing comma-separated text, with quotes, with an arbitrary first line (you have to type it into the xsl file).

The first example file is mine, using (which is a verbose kind of "If" or "Case" function). The 2nd example is Beverly Voth's, which is simpler (she says so :-). It uses the concat() function to add the quotes around each field's data.

CSV_wText_quotes_header_text.xsl.zip

BEV_CSV_wHeader_plain.xsl.zip

[comment]

There's an example of exporting to Excel 2004 XML format in the XSLT library on Filemaker's site.

EDIT:

If you can go through CSV, that would be much simpler.

Edited August 5, 2008 by Guest

[Emma in England]

Fenton, your ugly hack is the best option I've seen (apart from a long article about 'Field Aliases' which turned out to be an April Fool...).

 

There is a truly terrifying option here http://www.filemakerhacks.com/?p=3520 but I think that is way beyond me!

 

Ugly hack, here I come (hey if it all happens in the script and gets deleted after, who's to know?)