Tortoise SVN with excel files

[dennis00]

I have followed the instructions for calling BC3(here ). My issue is that when I choose to Merge (Reintegrate a branch), Tortoise's "Edit Conflict" button is grayed out. The button is available if I choose to use Tortoise's diff utility. I am trying to diff excel files if that makes a difference.

BC 3.2.4 trial version
TortoiseSVN 1.6.6 on SVN 1.6
Excel files are .xls from Excel 2003

[Aaron]

Hello,

If you are launching a BC3 Merge session from Tortoise (3 way merge, available in BC3 Pro), we do not support merging Excel files. BC3 only supports Excel as a read-only format; since it cannot be edited or saved, the Text Merge prompts an error in the GUI if you attempt to open an Excel file.

When you mention using "Tortoise's diff utility" are you referring to the Tortoise Merge utility? Or are you launching a two way compare using Tortoise?

[dennis00]

When you mention using "Tortoise's diff utility" are you referring to the Tortoise Merge utility? Or are you launching a two way compare using Tortoise?

Yes I should have said Tortoise Merge utility. So the disabled button is expected for an excel file?

I have added the script that converts an excel file to a .xml (here). Then I carefully look through the two files for relevant differences. Then I save it back to excel from .xml. This method works ok but I would prefer to view them as excel like files as BC3 interprets .csv. Is that possible?

Or perhaps I am missing something with the .csv files? When I tried to save them I could not find a script that converted them back from .csv to .xls without simply saving it as and excel file with csv formatting in it.

For clarification: I would like to merge two excel files with BC3. What is the best way to do that with the conversion scripts available?

[Chris]

The current version of Beyond Compare doesn't provide a good way to merge Excel files.

If you're merging from TortoiseSVN using the "3-way Merge (v3 Pro)" instructions from our web site, it will open files in the BC3 Text Merge. The Text Merge doesn't support XLS files, only text files.

The default settings open XLS files in the Data Compare. This method converts the files to CSV. We don't support editing using this method because the conversion to CSV drops information (formatting, formulas, etc). If we supported editing, every time you edited an XLS file you would lose all this information.

The only way you can edit XLS files in Beyond Compare 3 is in the Text Compare using the add on that converts the files to XML. The XML should contain all of the XLS file contents, this is why it allows you to save. The only problem is that you need to be careful to format the XML correctly, otherwise the conversion back won't work.

It is possible to specify a saving script for files opened in the Data Compare, we just haven't written one. To see what BC is running when you open XLS files, select "Tools > File Formats". Select the "MS Excel Workbooks" format. Go to the Conversion tab. If you uncheck "Disable editing", you'll be able to specify a script or conversion program to run for CSV to XLS conversion.