[thelist] Client Updates to SSI .inc file

[Ken Schaefer]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:55:52 -0300, Sarah Sweeney
<mr.sanders at designshift.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps your client could use Excel or other spreadsheet to maintain a
> > list, and save the spreadsheet as tab-delimited text (CSV, but with tabs
> > instead of commas), and upload via simple http upload page.  This would
> > have the advantage of a [probably] familiar interface for your client,
> > and minimal time investment on your part.
> 
> You could even use a spreadsheet to build the <span> tags
> "automatically", using a function to concatenate the span tags with text
> which the client would enter. So if they were entering storeName in A1,
> storeAddress in B1, and storeTel in C1, you could put a function like
> this in D1:
> = "<span class=""storeName"">" & A1 & "</span><br>\n<span
> class=""storeAddress"">" & B1 & "</span><br>\n<span class=""storeTel"">"
> & C1 & "</span><br>"
> 
> Then just copy-fill this formula down into the following rows. And you
> can use Excel's sorting to alphabetize the entries. (Excel  doesn't
> actually use \n for newlines - you can hit Alt + Enter in the formula
> field to make it add a newline.)
> 
> Once you've got all the data in, just select all the cells you want from
> the "D" column and copy and paste into a text file. I use this trick for
> lots of tedious data entry tasks.

If this is a Windows host, there is a text file ODBC driver (if this
is a text file), and you can use the Jet OLEDB Provider to query Excel
files. You can use your standard ADO objects (eg connection object),
and your SQL query can extract the data as required. No DB required
per se.

I assume that other platforms would also have ODBC drivers for text
and/or csv files (but probably not native Excel files).

Cheers
Ken