In a FEX I wrote, specifying EXCEL as my output format, is there a way to make sure the EXCEL file comes with a fixed format? Right now it gets outputted with a variable block format and I need to have fixed format.

Thanks in advance.

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

webmeister,

Why are you outputting to EXCEL?

By it's very nature it is a binary file and so must be variable.

My assumption is that you are actually using the file as input to something else
as you can not use an Excel document on the platform you are on.

What exactly are you trying to do?

What I was tryiong to do was to put my output file int a FB format for use with SMTP and e-mail, to e-mail the file to a recipient, but it looks on this end that we also don't have SMTP on the mainframe so this is now a moot issue.

Thanks for replying.

For future reference, as JG states, you can't create an Excel output file in FB format. You could create a fixed length, fixed position output file using ON TABLE SAVE which could then be imported into Excel, but no way of creating an actual Excel file as you specify.

But, just as a topic for discussion, you could create a csv file with fixed block length. Youd would then have to insert the comma's yourself by means of a defined field that holds the comma. And then it is just a normal plain good old hold format alpha that will create the fixed length file, but the contents is comma separated.

When you say "fixed block" format is that the same as saying fixed column width?

If so, I seem to recall a presentation at Summit about Excel outputs. In that presentation there was something about setting the Column Layout Justification to Wrap and specifying the width in inches. My understanding is that would translate to the column width in Excel.

Dan