N***@adobeforums.com
2005-11-18 17:21:23 UTC
I prepare a 400+ page catalog for an industrial distributor. I work in FrameMaker 7.0p579 on Windows ME and Windows XP. My customer has asked me to convert all the tables in the catalog to Excel spreadsheets, to streamline the annual update process. I hope someone here can suggest a method for doing this or direct me to an application that will help.
I have already done this with the first 44 pages of the catalog and it was not a pleasant experience. This is what I did:
With both FrameMaker and MS Word open, I selected an entire FM table and copied. I switched to Word and chose Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text. At this point, the first problem became obvious. Any 2-line column heads in my table acquired a hard return at the ends of the first lines. When I open this text file in Excel, the column heads will not be in the correct columns unless I replace all these hard returns with spacebands. Because of vast differences from one table to the next, I cannot leave the col. heads out.
After addressing this problem in the Word document by manually editing every column head with a hard return, I saved the document as a .txt file and close it.
In Excel, I opened the .txt file. In Excel's Text Import Wizard dialog Step 1, I chose "Delimited", Start import at row 1, File origin: Windows (ANSI).
Next >
I chose the Delimiter--tab; made sure the "Treat consecutive delimiters as one" box is unchecked; Text qualifier: none, as some tables contain " to indicate inch dimensions.
Next >
I scrolled through the contents of the import, selecting each column and designating it as "Text" rather than "General" or "Date". Some dimensions in my tables display fractional values as 7-5/8, for example. Excel sees these as dates, with disastrous, time-consuming results!
The Excel worksheet that results after I finish using the Text Import Wizard requires still more reformatting for maximum usability on the part of my customer, mostly merging titles and column heads in order to duplicate straddled table cells.
I hope I have made these problems clear and fervently hope that someone out there can suggest a solution for me. I find the reverse conversion fairly easy: selecting, copying and importing Excel tables into FrameMaker--through Word. I can ignore the column heads and replace the bodies of my old tables with updated information.
I have already done this with the first 44 pages of the catalog and it was not a pleasant experience. This is what I did:
With both FrameMaker and MS Word open, I selected an entire FM table and copied. I switched to Word and chose Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text. At this point, the first problem became obvious. Any 2-line column heads in my table acquired a hard return at the ends of the first lines. When I open this text file in Excel, the column heads will not be in the correct columns unless I replace all these hard returns with spacebands. Because of vast differences from one table to the next, I cannot leave the col. heads out.
After addressing this problem in the Word document by manually editing every column head with a hard return, I saved the document as a .txt file and close it.
In Excel, I opened the .txt file. In Excel's Text Import Wizard dialog Step 1, I chose "Delimited", Start import at row 1, File origin: Windows (ANSI).
Next >
I chose the Delimiter--tab; made sure the "Treat consecutive delimiters as one" box is unchecked; Text qualifier: none, as some tables contain " to indicate inch dimensions.
Next >
I scrolled through the contents of the import, selecting each column and designating it as "Text" rather than "General" or "Date". Some dimensions in my tables display fractional values as 7-5/8, for example. Excel sees these as dates, with disastrous, time-consuming results!
The Excel worksheet that results after I finish using the Text Import Wizard requires still more reformatting for maximum usability on the part of my customer, mostly merging titles and column heads in order to duplicate straddled table cells.
I hope I have made these problems clear and fervently hope that someone out there can suggest a solution for me. I find the reverse conversion fairly easy: selecting, copying and importing Excel tables into FrameMaker--through Word. I can ignore the column heads and replace the bodies of my old tables with updated information.