Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!sharkey!atanasoff!jwright
From: jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: MS Excel's signature and data format
Message-ID: <1905@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Date: 8 Nov 89 08:42:06 GMT
References: <1989Nov8.001152.7255@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Reply-To: jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright)
Distribution: na
Organization: Iowa State U. Computer Science Department, Ames, IA
Lines: 23

jinli@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Jin Tonic Li) writes:
| I am trying to save the data for one of my own application program in
| Microsoft Excel(Mac version) format so that I can do some simple data
| analysis using MS Excel.

I did the same thing.  I just set the creator to 'XCEL' and the type to
'TEXT'.  You get a file that, from the finder, looks like any other orphan
file.  But double click on it, and Excel starts up and imports the file!

| 2. For worksheet files, how are the data saved?(in row or column major manner?
|    any magic #s? special row/column delimiter? traps for # and string types?)

This is mostly documented in the manuals.  Each line of the text file is
a spreadsheet row.  Delimit the columns with either tabs or commas.  I
found tabs to work the best.  There's some nonsense regarding dates, but
you should be OK if you keep things consistent.

My turn for a question: Is there any problem with modifying my copy of
Excel so that the text files have an icon?

-- 
Jim Wright
jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu