I'm using the Export Search results to Excel Mod and the output in Excel doesn't display properly. One of the fields I have is a very large text area. It's taking some of the information from that cell and dividing it up amongst the cell's after it. (example: text area is cell J, text which should appear in cell J is appearing in K,L,M,etc.) Is this a matter of my settings in Microsoft Excel, or is it a setting that should be configured in the Mod? I really have no clue as to why the output is this way except for maybe a cell can only contain so many characters of data, so I don't know where to begin in fixing this.

Here's an amendment to my previous post. I would like to take out a field (the large text area field) entirely from the Excel output. I'm using the Spreadsheet Mod and have that configured to leave out said field in all displays, I would like the Excel Mod to also "forget" that information is there when it exports.

As to your first problem, I think that needs to be set in Excel. There's something about word-wrapping that you can set.

For your second problem, I've looked at the Export mod and it looks like you would need to make a change in sub xl_record:

JPD
http://www.jpdeni.com/dbman/

I have been trying this method and it doesn't seem to work.

Here is the code in my html.pl file:
----------------------------------------------------------->
sub xl_record {
# --------------------------------------------------------
# writes record in table format for Excel export

my (%rec) = @_; # Load any defaults to put in the VALUE field.
my $num = 0;

print "<tr>";
for (my $i =0; $i <= $#db_cols; $i++) {
unless ($i ==9) {
if ($db_form_len{$db_cols[$i]} >= -1) {
# Export all non-admin fields (admin form length = -2)
print qq|<td width="$db_lengths{$db_cols[$i]}"> <$font>$rec{$db_cols[$i]}</font></td>|;
}
}
}
print "</tr>";
}

<----------------------------------------------------------
I've tried different variations of ($i ==9) such as ($i =9), ($i = 9), ($i == 9), etc. and none of them seem to work. Oddly enough, dbman doesn't pick this up as an error, it runs the program but the export results still contain field 9. Did I copy/past the code incorrectly? Could there be some other code that needs to be changed for this to work? I would also like the export to ignore field 15, would I code that as ($i ==9,15) or ($i ==9; 15)?? please help.

It needs to be $i == 9 (spaces don't matter, but you have to have both = signs).

Just a little tutorial. In Perl = means "gets set to" and == means "is equal to."

I have no idea why it wouldn't work, though. When I run the code on my home computer, it does exactly what it's supposed to do.

It looks like you have the code correct -- in fact, I just copied it from your post and pasted it into my test script.

Since you want to eliminate two fields, it's easier to do an "if" than an "unless" (for me, anyway ), so let's try changing

unless ($i ==9) {

to

if (($i != 9) && ($i != 15)) {

(The != means "is not equal to.")

This works on my home computer, too.

JPD
http://www.jpdeni.com/dbman/

It worked! in a way...

That line of code certainly did the trick. however, it wasn't until I added if (($i != 9) && ($i != 15)) {
into sub csv_header , sub csv_record , and sub xl_header as well as sub xl_record. Now, Im not sure if it needed to be in all those subroutines, but the point is it now works.

With this out of the way I have one more important detail to fix. I would not like anyone but the admin to have access to the "Export Results" button. This is imperative for security reaons. I've tried the method to which you can make a field only visible to the admin but it doesn't seem to work with buttons. Is there a way to do this?

I'm glad you were able to work it out.

The first thing you need to do is to change the line in db.cgi, sub main so only admins can use the function:

elsif ($in{'export_records'}) { if ($per_admin) { &export_records; } else { &html_unauth; } }

That's your main security.

As for your button, right now you probably have

<p><center> <INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="export_records" VALUE="Export Results">
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="view_records" VALUE="View Records">

or something similar.

Change this to

It won't print out the button unless you have admin permission.

JPD
http://www.jpdeni.com/dbman/