Hi Christian and everyone
On Sat, 2007-09-01 at 11:46 -0700, Christian Einfeldt wrote:
I need some help figuring out how to make OOo handle a massive 6
MB .xls file better.
And Ian Lynch replied:
My first reaction is that a spreadsheet is the wrong tool for this
application. This should be in a database.
Maybe we can have the best of both worlds. I thought about this on the
weekend, and now that I'm at work where I have access to Excel, I can
confirm this is an approach that might be worth pursuing (with the
disclaimer that a complex spreadsheet might have problems I can't
anticipate).
The idea is to use the Excel spreadsheet as a database, and access it
using Base.
Here is what I did with my experiment at work:
1. Open OpenOffice.org Base
2. Select "Connect to an existing database", and select "Spreadsheet" from
the dropdown list. Click Next.
3. Click Browse and locate and select the spreadsheet. Click Finish.
4. Give the database a name that makes sense and save it on the local
machine.
5. Once the database has opened, click on Tables, and double click "Sheet
1" (or whatever the relevant spreadsheet is called).
You should have the spreadsheet opened in front of you. Did it open any
quicker?
If so, it might be worth taking this further:
- You'll need to make sure any formulas are still working. I didn't have
any formulas in my spreadsheet, so I added a simple one, and it seems to
be working in the table.
- You'll need to copy the database file onto each computer that needs to
access the database.
- You may wish to create some forms or queries to make everything work
better, but that's something for the future.
Long term, you may be better off creating something better. But in the
meantime this will allow the staff members with Excel to still access the
file, and give (hopefully) faster access and enhanced functionality to the
FOSS using staff.
The enhanced functionality would be the queries, forms etc that you
create. And giving the FOSS people increased functionality may help to
sway the Microsoft users.
Hope this helps!
Adrian
www.tryanotherangle.org
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