Word and Excel exports

[Jeff]

I just returned from a conference where one of the things I was looking at was a product for reporting that we could use to replace Crystal Reports. The only downside I can see right off is it requires Office 2000 or later for the Word and Excel exports to work. I have already checked and it does both Word exact and Word editable formats. The HTML export looked really good too.

Would this be a problem for any one? Also, I don't know right now if this will make into the next version of PC+ so don't take this as this is going to happen. Converting all the reports is a major undertaking and I don't know if there will be enough time to do this.

[NeilZ]

Works for me as far as exports.

Here's the biggy ... will it allow better custom reporting ?? Say if I wanted to have access to both the pledge data, and the current contributions, could that happen ??

BTW .. have I said how much I appreciate your customer support and willingness to work with us ??

[Jeff]

This would really just be in the formatting. This other product works with regular foxpro reports so it theoritically be possible to have Word, Excel, & PDF exports in the custom report writer.

[NeilZ]

This would really just be in the formatting. This other product works with regular foxpro reports so it theoritically be possible to have Word, Excel, & PDF exports in the custom report writer.

Even better !!

That said ... I really did mean to ask if there was a way to allow custom reports to have access to both the pledge and the posted contributions sides ... I realize it may have to go in the wish list ... but keep that in mind too !!

[Jeff]

The problem with pledged and posted is the Cust Reports can't handle an outer join. So if you have someone who has a pledge and they have not given, they don't show on the report. The opposite is true as well; you have someone who has given, but not pledged they don't show either. Changing the reports so it can do an outer join is a lot of work. FWIW, version 7 used to work this way and people found the pledged custom reports to be unusable.

This is sort off topic, but what specifically are you trying to accomplish? Maybe we can find of way without having to use an outer join. Do you need totals or the complete details?

For example if we were to add a new "Posted Totals" option. You would be prompted for a date range to prepare reports for, we could summarize the contributions and include the following fields:

Env_no, Fund_no, Fund_Descripit, Total Pledged, Total Given

Envelope numbers would be included regardless if they have a pledge or not. Would that work?

[NeilZ]

The problem with pledged and posted is the Cust Reports can't handle an outer join. So if you have someone who has a pledge and they have not given, they don't show on the report. The opposite is true as well; you have someone who has given, but not pledged they don't show either. Changing the reports so it can do an outer join is a lot of work. FWIW, version 7 used to work this way and people found the pledged custom reports to be unusable.

This is sort off topic, but what specifically are you trying to accomplish? Maybe we can find of way without having to use an outer join. Do you need totals or the complete details?

For example if we were to add a new "Posted Totals" option. You would be prompted for a date range to prepare reports for, we could summarize the contributions and include the following fields:

Env_no, Fund_no, Fund_Descripit, Total Pledged, Total Given

Envelope numbers would be included regardless if they have a pledge or not. Would that work?

Jeff,

I kinda figured it was an outer join situation again ... too bad PC+ doesn't use DB2 .

Anyway, its mostly needed during our stewardship/operating fund pledge period. We need to know who pledged, what they pledged, as well as those who hadn't pledged, yet still gave, and the total amount given for all people pulled. Of course, they need to be filtered to pull members and those in member households.

This is used to decide the type of pledge card to send, as well as localized printing of name, address, prior pledge, etc. Currently, I have to do two separate custom extracts to Excel, then merge them and sort within Excel. Even then, it seems some people fall through the filters.

Anything that would simplify the pull would be great.

Something else that may come in handy would be another type of export from the standard reports, where the headers/footers are eliminated, and the data is exported in comma-deliminted format, much as the custom reports can be exported.


thanks,
Neil

[Jeff]

Something else that may come in handy would be another type of export from the standard reports, where the headers/footers are eliminated, and the data is exported in comma-deliminted format, much as the custom reports can be exported.

You can do this right now. You can use the custom reports to select your data and then send it out in a data format. You can select a DBF, ASCII fixed, ASCII comma delimited, ASCII tab delimited, XLS 5, XLS 2. If you really want to go back to something old, you can select the visicalc format.

I saw a one of the techs create a report for a customer and it was pretty clever. The customer wanted a comma delimited export but needed processing that could only be done in the layout. So Teri created an expression that returned a string with the information they wanted, putting in the needed commas. She put one field on the report to print the string and closed up all the other bands. The customer runs the report to a disk file and what they get is a ASCII comma delimited file.

This case was a little extreme, the customer had very specific needs that required processing in the report layout. If all you want is a data dump, you can just change the report output to a data file.

[Jeff]

From your description a contributions totals option might give you what you are looking for. You would be able to query on total given >0 and pledged = 0. Query by total pledge amounts. Would you have any need to get to the detail contribution records? (ie how much given on a specific date to a specific fund?)

[NeilZ]

From your description a contributions totals option might give you what you are looking for. You would be able to query on total given >0 and pledged = 0. Query by total pledge amounts.

Sounds about right.

Would you have any need to get to the detail contribution records? (ie how much given on a specific date to a specific fund?)

No, as that data can be pulled from a standard report if necessary.

And Jeff, I think I may have been misunderstood about the export ... I would want to be able to export from the standard report in comma delimited. Does that make sense ??

[foxygramps]

We seem to have gotten off the initial question in most of these replies.

My answer is that I still use word and excel 95 with windows 98-2. Many documents will not open if sent in later versions, but I can save them in Open Office, and open them there. This should be an unnecessary requiremeent. I see no need to purchase expensive upgrades just to get features that I do not need.
Documents should be sent in the oldest format in use by many of the potential users

[Jeff]

The problem is the product I am looking at uses COM automation to produce the exports. COM automation allows a program to tap into document model of an office application to programatically create documents. This feature was added in Office 2000. So if we switch, in order to create a word or excel export a machine would have to have office 2000 or later installed.

Office 2000 has been shipping since June 1999, so I am asking here on this forum to see how big of an impact this would be to our customers. I want to support the widest number of users possible, but I am also looking for alternatives to Crystal Reports. A good number of our tech calls involve crystal report issues.

[tborgal]

I agree with foxygramps on this one. I do not have Office 2000 on all the machines that are using PC+. Therefore it would require a substantial investment and that is probably not going to happen. Keep it compatable with the oldest versions you can.