This is the first time that I've had to do this, and I hate having to do it.

I don't own a copy of Excel and would prefer to remain a non-owner.

My customer has requested that a report that I wrote for them a year or so
ago be spat out as an Excel file rather than the very pretty PDF version
that I gave them thanks to FastReports.

As usual, there are problems.  The report itself is generated by poking some
stored procedure code into 80 remote interbase databases, running that
stored procedure code in each of the remote databases, then selecting from
that same stored procedure code.

Currently I am using a thing called TXLSFileLibrary to generate the output
and calling ShellExecute on the resulting file to display the results.  If
the machine running the report doesn't have Excel installed, then the file
is not displayed and I don't really care...at least it is still created.

Since I'm so cheap, I have OpenOffice installed, and the ShellExecute loads
both OpenOffice and the output file and everything looks sweet.  However,
when I use Microsoft's XL viewer everything looks different and some of the
results of the formulae are displayed incorrectly or not at all.

The bits that work are:
   1) a summary sheet in the workbook that shows which databases responded
and any error text
   2) a sheet for each database which responded without error, and a whole
bunch of data in the sheet.

The bits that don't work are:
  1) some of the sum formulae on the sheet (but only with MS XL Viewer)
  2) links between sheets

Any ideas, gotchas, stories welcomed.

The exe that I am shipping will run on any machine that has access to the
WAN.   There's a really good chance that there will be no software installed
on that same machine that understands Excel.

Trevor


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