Copy and Paste with Excel
DataSource.recordsAsText() can export
a set of DataSource records in tab-separated-values format so that it can be copied and pasted
into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
However, be aware that Excel does a bunch of type
guessing on pasted data:
- values that look like dates (eg 1-2-2011 and even just 1-2)
will become true date-valued cells (as indicated by Excel rendering them as eg 2-Jan).
Note that the month-day-year interpretation is locale-dependent so be sure text is
exported
- values that look numeric, eg "5.0" become true number values (as indicated by
Excel showing just "5")
- values that look like times, eg "5:30", will be converted to
times (as indicated by Excel showing 5:30:00 AM when editing the value)
- values with a
leading "=" will be treated as formulas
Unfortunately, when these behaviors are
undesirable, there is no means of turning them off that doesn't have any drawbacks. You can:
- adding a leading space or other char (but this changes the cell value).
- turning
the cell into a trivial formula, eg ="literal value". But this means that when the cell is
edited, it's value is a formula.
- format the cells as text in Excel before pasting data
onto them
The first or second approach can be enabled when exporting text - see
DataSource.recordsAsText() and
DataSourceField.exportForceText().