Write data to an XLS file without Microsoft Excel installed. Tutorial.

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 may read other examples:

• RS232 to Excel. Four methods to send data from RS232 to Excel
• Write data to a CSV text file
• Send data to Excel through the DDE interface

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).

Fig.1. Local Database plugin.

Fig.2. Excel export. Selecting a database.

• 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.