Excel Automation - Please help ...

Nikhil Trivedi

Dear friend, I think Shellapi.h might be of your help. Once I used it to open an text and excel file. Dont know specific functions right now. ShellExecute() will help. I think. Nikhs Nikhil Trivedi

Nikhil Trivedi

GuyM wrote:

how do I open an existing XLS file

I think the ShellApi.h would be of your help. You can get its detail from msdn.com. I think the ShellExecute() function will do for you. Hope this would help you.

GuyM

Thanks for your answer, but I want to programmatically read/write values to/from excel (not just run the excel application). This is done with COM ... I've found an example in MSDN but: 1. It doesn't show how to open an existing file. 2. It only shows how to read/write an entire range of cells, not a single cell Thanks.

Nikhil Trivedi

Sorry that I got your question wrong. I havent worked on office tools, but one of my friend who worked on this told me that he was using excel.h then. I dont know if it might help you or not. Nikhs Nikhil Trivedi

Roger Stoltz

An existing excel document is opened with Open(...) in the Workbooks interface. Do you have a link to the MSDN example? Perhaps the explanation becomes more clear if it's based on the example you've based your code on.

"It's supposed to be hard, otherwise anybody could do it!" - selfquote
"High speed never compensates for wrong direction!" - unknown

GuyM

This is the link to the example: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308407[^] As you can see there, the example doesn't open an existing excel file but creates a new (unnamed) one. Second, is uses COleSafeArray in order to access (read/write) an entire range of cells, where I need to access only single cells ... Thanks for your help ... :cool:

David Crow

GuyM wrote:

My question is how do I open an existing XLS file...

if (app.CreateDispatch("Excel.Application") == TRUE)
{
app.SetVisible(TRUE);

Workbooks books = app.GetWorkbooks();

\_Workbook book = books.Open("C:\\\\Book1.xls",
                             vtOptional, vtOptional, vtOptional,
                             vtOptional, vtOptional, vtOptional,
                             vtOptional, vtOptional, vtOptional,
                             vtOptional, vtOptional, vtOptional);
...

}

"A good athlete is the result of a good and worthy opponent." - David Crow

"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne

GuyM

Great - it worked !! Thanks !! Now just one more thing ...how do I get/set the value a certain cell (for example A1).

Roger Stoltz

Before you continue you have to be aware that Excel deals with containers. This means that when you launch Excel with CreateDispatch or similar, the next step is usually to get an interface for the WorkBook collection/container called WorkBooks. The same goes for the WorkSheet objects in the WorkSheets collection/container and so on. Once you've got hold of the WorkBooks interface, you call WorkBooks::Open(...) in order to open an existing document, a WorkBook. Then you'll get a WorkBook interface to be able to access the document. When the WorkBook has been opened, you have to choose which WorkSheet you want to use with WorkBook::get_WorkSheets() and later WorkSheets::get_Item(...). For each cell you want to read or write, you have to select a "Range". The example shows this. Regarding the fact that you don't want to use a SafeArray to write the data, I think you can give a VARIANT as argument to Range::put_Value() with a single value and the type set to e.g. VT_I4 for a 32-bit integer.

"It's supposed to be hard, otherwise anybody could do it!" - selfquote
"High speed never compensates for wrong direction!" - unknown

David Crow

GuyM wrote:

...how do I set the value a certain cell (for example A1).

Worksheets sheets = book.GetSheets();

_Worksheet sheet = sheets.GetItem(COleVariant((short) 1));

Range range = sheet.GetRange(COleVariant("A1"), COleVariant("A1"));

range.SetValue(COleVariant("12345.6"));

"A good athlete is the result of a good and worthy opponent." - David Crow

"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne

hellogany

HI i want to set a particular cell to RED color ?? and also while quittin the application, the excel file need to be saved....

David Crow

hellogany wrote:

HI i want to set a particular cell to RED color ??

Range range = sheet.GetRange(COleVariant("A1"), COleVariant("A1"));
Interior interior = range.GetInterior();
interior.SetColorIndex(COleVariant(3L));

hellogany wrote:

and also while quittin the application, the excel file need to be saved....

So you might want to call Save() or SaveAs().

"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown

"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch

hellogany

thanks for the reply. i have to find a value in the excel cell and should replace a new value in that cell Can u help me on this issue? gany

David Crow

hellogany wrote:

i have to find a value in the excel cell...

Look at the Range::Find() method.

"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown

"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch

thready

DavidCrow wrote:

Range range = sheet.GetRange(COleVariant("A1"), COleVariant("A1"));Interior interior = range.GetInterior();interior.SetColorIndex(COleVariant(3L));

I've been looking all over for how to change the color - thanks to you it works - but just a simple question- Why is 3L = red? How does this color index thing work? Is there a way to use RGB with the 3 params to get any color? Thank you again! Mike

David Crow

thready wrote:

Why is 3L = red?

Because that's what the designer of that type library decided.

thready wrote:

How does this color index thing work?

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Just use the OLE/COM Object Viewer to find out the other values.

"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown

"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch