Export Records to Existing Excel Spreadsheets, Is it Even Possible?!

[drdunse]

So the company I am working for just picked up a huge contract with a cruise line, where we are going to be surveying some of their hardware and other equipment, guess who has two thumbs and is the lucky son of a gun to make the database for this project? This guy!

 

Anyways, I can't really go into detail for legal reasons, but I can explain what I am looking for.

 

I'm wondering if there is a way to export the records from the database in filemaker to an existing Excel spreadsheet, and the biggest reason this is the route I'm trying to go is, I based the solution that I've build thus far on the spreadsheet deliverable that they had given us at the beginning of the bidding process. There are several fields in this deliverable that have the same name, which in Excel is no problem, but we work with Filemaker lol, so there's that. Anyway, so I have about 5-6 different types of fields that share the same name in the spreadsheet that i cannot allow in filemaker, so I cannot just set up an export to create an excel document, or else the client would most likely be very unhappy with the deliverable that they receive. So i want to know if there is any way to throw all of my records into the spreadsheet that they gave us starting at a specific cell for each of the 8 (I think it was 8) worksheets in the file. haha the more I type and am reading what i type, the more impossible I feel like this would be. 

Thank you to anyone who can offer some help or insight, it is greatly appreciated!

[comment]

This looks like a typical XY problem. It seems that what you really want is export to Excel (or perhaps some other format that Excel can open) with custom column headers, isn't it?

Edited September 15, 2015 by comment

[drdunse]

Essentially yes, only some of the column headers are under subdivisions of a larger header. ie. Analogue camera would be a header with 6 other headers under it, one of those 6 has another 2 headers under that.

Edited September 15, 2015 by drdunse

[comment]

I see. IMHO, your options are limited to the following three:

1. Export as XML and use a custom XSLT stylesheet to produce a file in the SpreadsheetML format (a.k.a. "Microsoft Office Excel 2002 and Excel 2003 XML Format"). This is relatively simple to do - however it depends on whether your customer will accept a file in this format.
2. Export as XML (or some other format),  then use third-party software to convert it to a "regular" (.xslx) Excel file.
3.  Use a plugin.

[drdunse]

I see, well i guess I'm going to have to do some research on XSLT stylesheets now. Thank you for your input!

[Wim Decorte]

You can also leverage the Office APIs and solve it by using OS-level scripting that does this - OS level scripting is easy to store / create / execute from inside FM.  As always, multiple ways to skin this cat... pick whatever you are most comfortable with.

[beverly]

"into an existing Excel..." This I did with the use of a Work Sheet that was for the "import" and other related worksheets (same workbook) used to pull data into cells (with formulas). The workbook (entire Spreadsheet) had charts and other fancy formatting (including other graphics) that were just not possible with XML/XSLT (which works well, but does not set graphics or charts). If you Workbook has a 'feeder' worksheet, this may be what you can do.

beverly