Output File Formatting Question

[omee]

Hi,

I am a new user of BC3. I have tried searching online for an answer to my problems but to no avail.

I have to compare two excel files and update one with the changes in it. (The files have only 2 columns in them. An ID and its Title) The changes that are made need to be highlighted in the excel so that I know what ID needs to be changed in the system. My problem is that I am not able to highlight the rows in excel using BC.

To get around this issue, I created an extra column where I thought I would enter an identifier (eg a letter) in the rows that are updated and later on filter that column with the identifier to have all the rows that were updated and highlight them. The problem I am facing is that I am unable to enter any information in the records in BC3. It lets me move the records or delete them, but I cant change one particular cell. Can I do that? Does BC3 have this functionality? Is there something very simple that I am overlooking?

FYI, since BC3 dosent allow editing of xlsx files, I saved them as csv and used those.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Aaron]

Hello,

As you found, BC3 does not support editing Excel .xlsx directly. BC3 uses Excel itself to convert and display the file, but Excel does not expose a method to allow us to Save, so we cannot save any edits back into Excel. If you save as CSV, this is a plain text and we could edit information into a new column. We're editing text, and are not able to access Excel features such as Highlights.

Are you moving or deleting to an Excel xlsx side? These should also be prevented. If you edited our File Format, it is possible to disable the "Disable Editing" behavior, but this is not recommended as the saves would not be in an Excel format. You can go to the Tools menu -> File Formats, select your Excel format, and click Restore Factory Defaults (then Save) to set back to our default settings.

[omee]

Hi Aaron,

I apologize for my late reply, things have been quite busy at work.

Since BC cant access Excel functions such as Highlights, the updated records cant be highlighted. Understood.

So I take the .xlsx file, open it in Excel, save it as .csv and open the csv file in BC. Then I use BC to check the file against a similar file and save one of the .csv files. Then I take that .csv file, open it in Excel and save it as .xlsx again. I can add/remove the rows in each of the files this way.

What I want to do now is to add data to individual cells (all in one column) in one of the .csv files and I am not able to do that. It lets me add/del whole rows, but for some reason I cant add data to an individual cell when I am in BC. (Reason I want to do this is so that when I open it in excel, I can sort by that column, and highlight all the changed fields)

So how can I add data in a cell (using a .csv) file in BC.

I hope I have explained properly what I want to achieve and not confused you even more.
Thanks again for your help.

[Aaron]

Hello,

Would the added data be a manual edit? Or copying from one side to the other?

You can manually edit a single cell in the Column Details status line at the bottom of the display. Select a cell, then press F2 to edit it. Is this the functionality you are looking for?

[omee]

Hi Aaron,
Yes, that is exactly the functionality I was looking for. However is it possible to manually edit more than 1 cell at a time? I would like to select a bunch of cells and place the same value in them

Thanks

[Aaron]

Sorry, we don't support the same style of selection and editing as Excel. We can edit a single cell, or you can select and copy multiple full rows from one side to the other.

[omee]

Thanks Aaron!
Appreciate your help