I'm using Save As Excel... to get data out of Filemaker. One of the fields is a text field (500 characters) and when it goes to Excel, the display is a bunch of hash marks (#####). Setting the cell formatting to "General" solves the problem.

But the client is awful picky and want the text to display correctly without doing that last extra step.

Is there a way to set the formatting of an Excel field to display the long text in a field?

You might not want to do it cause it requires a bit of work - but once the method is established it becomes easier for other needs.

1) Create an Excel with 'placeholders' for content and format anything and everything within Excel - as much sophistication as you want.

2) in Excel "Save as XML"

3) Place the XML file's content - the complete text in a system field within a FileMaker record.

4) When you are ready to create the file - by some means - substitute the content placeholders with the live content. It is basically an excel mail merge except for cells.

5) Export the result field as a file (.xls) this is the short method since the file is still technically text it will open properly in the Excel program with all that formatting in place - OR - more lengthy method is to use AppleScript to convert it to binary .xls - this is necessary if you are using protections and want the file protected etc. If you are on windows - you could create a macro method convert on first open,

Others might have a simpler method but this is extremely powerful in that anything you can design in Excel you can populate with FM data and export it.

How about setting Excel up to use a Data Source? That's how I "bring" FM data into a highly formatted worksheet.

Another approach may be to have the data on a worksheet that's not for viewing, and create a reference to the data from one cell to another.