Write data to an XLS file without Microsoft Excel installed

Task:

I have a piece of equipment that transmits serial data to a terminal program. Can the data be sent directly to Excel?

Requirements:

• Advanced Serial Data Logger Professional, Enterprise, or a trial version;
• Local database

It is assumed that:

You've prepared parser items for export.

For this tutorial, all items were prepared in the previous part.

Also, you could look at some other examples of data parsing (different parser types).

• Process data from a barcode scanner
• Parse data with the help of regular expressions
• Parse data from the filling machine
• Log and parse data from an intellectual pressure measuring device

Solution:

All parser items are now ready for export to an Excel spreadsheet. Please, open the configuration window of the "Local database" plugin (fig.1 and 2).

• Select a database type in field #1.
• Specify a path for all CSV files in field #2.
• Specify a file name prefix in field #3.

All other options are optional. On the second "Data formats" page, you can specify a representation of your data. Because all our variables have the "string" data type, it is unnecessary to change format settings.

On the next "Columns order" page, you can specify how variables will be exported to a spreadsheet. Suppose you do not specify a column's order number. In that case, the program will write all variables in the following order: internal variables (FULL_DATA_PACKET, DATA_PACKET, and DATE_TIME_STAMP), parser variables, in the order, as you've specified in the parser configuration.

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