Focal Point
[SOLVED] Partial integration of PCHOLD Excel output with OpenOffice achieved

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https://forums.informationbuilders.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7971057331/m/3087021206

April 14, 2011, 10:17 AM
George Patton
[SOLVED] Partial integration of PCHOLD Excel output with OpenOffice achieved
As we know, doing a PCHOLD in EXL97 or EXL2K format produces output in XHT format which is not readable yet by OpenOffice.

PCHOLD FORMAT EXCEL format produces a servlet that has no recognisable file extension. It's possible to save this output, rename it and then open it with OpenOffice but that's a hassle and not something the average user will put up with.

However, by changing: WebFOCUS Administration Console - Configuration - Redirection Settings, there is some improvement.

PCHOLD FORMAT EXCEL will produce output with the filetype now properly identified as .XLS and the file can be immediately opened with OpenOffice. The file has a weird name, but can be saved to the local disk with a good name just the same as PDF output, for example.

To make this happen, go to WebFOCUS Administration Console - Configuration - Redirection Settings

Change the settings for .xls output as follows: Set Redirect to NO and Save Report to YES.

I haven't had any luck with EXL97 or EXL2K - yet ...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: George Patton,


WebFOCUS 7.7.05 Windows, Linux, DB2, IBM Lotus Notes, Firebird, Lotus Symphony/OpenOffice. Outputs PDF, Excel 2007 (for OpenOffice integration), WP
April 15, 2011, 10:49 AM
Rigel7
George --

Excellent, thank you for sharing this! I have struggled for many years with trying use WebFOCUS with open source/standards such as OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox, etc. I am glad to see some progress in this area.

  <RANT ON>  

I still struggle with Firefox and WebFOCUS. Info Assist is mostly unusable, at least in the 7.6.x line. I also long for the ability to override Dev Studio's hard-coded launch of IE all the time and point it to Firefox.

You know, if you look at the 3rd Party Information on the /ibi_apps/ homepage, there are quite a few open source products being utilized, many under Apache license (I remember when the New Atlanta ServletExec engine was swapped out for Tomcat in version 7). Our institution depends heavily on WebFOCUS, and we've used it for years, I really like it -- and I'd love to see Information Builders giving back to the open source community by making a stronger effort in the product line to support Open Office, Firefox, SVN and other open source software that their customers are using. Microsoft is great and all, but it's not the only tool being used in the industry.

  </RANT OFF>  


Can't wait for compound support on PCHOLD to LibreOffice 3.3 .

-- Dan at UNO

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rigel7,


WebFOCUS 8.8.05M (Prod)/8.0.09(Sandbox) Windows