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Icon:
Function: readExcel
Property window:
Short description:
Reads the newer a Microsoft Excel .xlsx file.
Long Description:
The readExcel action only reads the newer excel file formats: i.e. the files with the extentions .xlsx and .xlsm. If you need to import into Anatella some data stored into the older excel file format (from the older version of Excel before 2003; i.e. the files with the extensions .xls or .xlt), you should use the
readExcelOld action (see section 5.2.33. for more details about this action).
See section 5.1.1 to have more information on how to specify the filename of the .xlsx file (i.e. You can use relative path, wildcards, and Javascript to specify your filename).
Each different cell inside a .xlsx file can have a different Data-Type (i.e. it can be String, Double, Date, etc.). Furthermore, there is no way to a-priori “guess” the most common type used inside a specific column inside an Excel sheet. For these reasons, all the cells inside an Excel file are imported inside Anatella as simple “Strings”. You need to “manually” use the ChangeDataType Action to set a specific type for a column.
You can drag&drop a .xlsx file from a MS-File-Explorer-Window into an Anatella-Graph-Window: This will directly create the corresponding ReadExcel Action inside the Anatella graph.
Excel uses two different ways to store the dates inside the .xlsx files: Dates can either be stored as Strings or integer numbers. The dates that are saved inside a .xlsx file as integer numbers are imported inside Anatella as numbers. To convert these dates to “normal” Anatella dates, you can use the “to String from Elapsed Time” option of the ChangeDataType Action. Use these parameters:
•Reference Time: 18991230 00:00:00
•Elapsed Time Unit: day.
Here is a screenshot: