Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

How to bypass the limitation of 16,383 of Excel

COM and Automation

How to bypass the limitation of 16,383 of Excel

by  Mike Gagnon  Posted    (Edited  )
* Program...........: Copy2xls.prg
* Author............: Daniel Gramunt
* Project...........: common
* Created...........: 11.10.2000 17:25:06
*) Description.......: Replacement for the native COPY TO TYPE XL5 command.
*) : Excel 5 and Excel 95 have a limit of 16,383 rows per worksheet.
*) : The limit in Excel 97 and Excel 2000 is 65,536 rows.
*) : Since there is no TYPE XL8 command, VFP copies only the first 16,383 records.
*) :
*) : This program works around this limitation and allows to copy as many
*) : records as the Excel version used on the user's machine supports.
*) :
*) : The solution is very simple:
*) : 1. COPY TO TYPE CSV
*) : 2. Open CSV file and SaveAs(tcExcelFile) using Automation
*) :
*) : Assumes that MS Excel (Excel 97 or higher) is installed on the
*) : user's machine (well, it will also work with Excel 5.0 and 95, but of
*) : course the limit of 16,383 will apply).
*) :
*) : Returns the number of exported records if successful, otherwise:
*) : -1 = parameter missing or wrong type
*) : -2 = no table open in current workarea
*) : -3 = number of max. Excel rows exceeded
*) : -4 = user didn't want to overwrite existing Excel file (SET SAFETY = ON)
*) :
*) : Performance note: The COPY TO command in VFP works very fast compared to
*) : anything that involves automation. However, since we use
*) : automation only to open the exported file and to save it
*) : under a different format, there is almost no performance
*) : penalty.
*) :
* Calling Samples...: Copy2Xls("c:\temp\bidon.xls")
* Parameter List....: tcExcelFile - Path\Filename of the Excel file to be created.
* : [tlDbf] - Specifies which TYPE to use with the COPY TO command:
* : .t. = TYPE FOX2X
* : .f. = TYPE CSV
* : Default = .f.
* : There are some differences between FOX2X and CSV. Depending on the
* : data to be copied, you can now specify which method to use.
* : See the remarks below for a description of the differences between
* : the two methods.
* : [tlNoFieldNames] - By default, the first row of the Excel sheet contains the
* : fieldnames. If tlNoFieldNames is .t., the Excel sheet contains
* : only the data.
* :
* Major change list.: 26.10.2000: COPY TO FOX2X and SaveAs(< tcExcelFile >) instead of
* : "assembling" individual Excel files.
* : Thanks to an idea from ¦etin Bas÷z on the UT
* : 12.04.2000: COPY TO CSV instead of FOX2X.
* : FOX2X has the following limitations:
* : - problem with codepage 850 (e.g. character "p")
* : - doesn't support long fieldnames (work around would be easy though)
* : - doesn't support datetime
* : CSV has none of the above problems, but has some other
* : limitations:
* : - logical fields are translated into F/T vs FALSE/TRUE.
* : This isn't a problem, but to keep things consistent, we
* : don't use the native COPY TO TYPE XL5 anymore for tables
* : with a record count below the limitation.
* : - If a character field contains only digits and the value
* : contains leading zeros, Excel translates this into a
* : numeric value (e.g. "00000100" => 100). This could be a
* : problem, specially if the field is a PK and you later
* : import the Excel file back into VFP.
* : - [New 04.06.2001]
* : If a character field contains double quotes and/or commas,
* : the result gets messed-up:
* :
* : - VFP ------------------------------------------ - Excel -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Remarks -----------------------------------
* : cDesc1 cDesc2 cDesc1 cDesc2 Next Field
* : ------------------------ ----------------------- ----------------------------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ---------------------------------------------
* : Rotating seal 1" Bibus:Deublin model 55 Rotating seal 1",Bibus:Deublin model 55" cDesc2 appended to cDesc1, all other fields
* : are shifted to the left by one
* :
* : Bush 7/16" D=15/4,75 L=86,4 Bush 7/16",D=15/4 75 L=86 4" part of cDesc2 appended to cDesc1 (text until
* : 1st comma), the remaining text until the next
* : comma stays in cDesc2, the text after the
* : second comma is moved to field3, after that,
* : every field is shifted to the right by one
* :
* : 04.06.2001 New parameters < tlDbf > and < tlNoFieldNames > added
*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Code:
LPARAMETER tcExcelFile, tlDbf, tlNoFieldNames

#INCLUDE FoxPro.h

#DEFINE xlWorkbookNormal      -4143     && used by SaveAs() to save in current Excel version
#DEFINE ccErrorNoParameter    "Parameter < tcExcelFile > : Parameter missing or wrong type (Expecting 'C')"
#DEFINE ccErrorNoTableOpen    "No table is open in the current workarea"
#DEFINE ccErrorToManyRows     "Number of records (" + ;
                              ALLTRIM(TRANSFORM(lnRecords, "999,999,999")) +;
                              ") exceed max. number of Excel rows (" -;
                              ALLTRIM(TRANSFORM(lnXlsMaxNumberOfRows, "999,999,999"))+;
                              ")"

*-- check parameter
IF VARTYPE(tcExcelFile) <> "C" OR EMPTY(tcExcelFile)
   ??CHR(7)
   WAIT WINDOW NOWAIT ccErrorNoParameter
   RETURN -1
ELSE
   tcExcelFile = ForceExt(tcExcelFile, "XLS")
ENDIF

*-- make sure that we have a table/cursor in the selected workarea
IF EMPTY(ALIAS())
   ??CHR(7)
   WAIT WINDOW NOWAIT ccErrorNoTableOpen
   RETURN -2
ENDIF

LOCAL loXls, lnXlsMaxNumberOfRows, lnRecords, lnRetVal, lcTempDbfFile

loXls = CREATEOBJECT("excel.application")
*-- suppress Excel alerts and messages (similar to SET SAFETY OFF)
loXls.DisplayAlerts = .f.
*-- get number of max. rows from Excel. Before we can count the rows in a
*-- worksheet, we need to add a workbook.
loXls.workbooks.add()
lnXlsMaxNumberOfRows = loXls.ActiveWorkBook.ActiveSheet.Rows.Count - 1 && 1 header row

lnRecords = RECCOUNT()

*-- check if the number or records exceeds Excel's limit
IF lnRecords > lnXlsMaxNumberOfRows
   ??CHR(7)
   WAIT WINDOW NOWAIT ccErrorToManyRows
   *-- close Excel
   loXls.application.quit()
   RETURN -3
ENDIF

*-- respect SET SAFETY
IF SET("SAFETY") = "ON" AND FILE(tcExcelFile)
   IF MESSAGEBOX(tcExcelFile + " already exists, overwrite it?",;
                 MB_YESNO + MB_ICONQUESTION + MB_DEFBUTTON2) = IDNO
      *-- user selected < No > so we bail out
      *-- close Excel
      loXls.application.quit()
      RETURN -4
   ENDIF
ENDIF

IF tlDbf
   lcTempDbfFile = AddBs(SYS(2023)) + SYS(3) + ".DBF"
   COPY TO (lcTempDbfFile) TYPE FOX2X AS 850
ELSE
   lcTempDbfFile = AddBs(SYS(2023)) + SYS(3) + ".CSV"
   COPY TO (lcTempDbfFile) TYPE CSV
ENDIF

lnRetVal = _TALLY

*-- open exported CSV file
loXls.Application.Workbooks.Open(lcTempDbfFile)

IF tlNoFieldNames
   loXls.ActiveSheet.Range("1:1").delete
ENDIF

*-- save as Excel file
loXls.ActiveSheet.saveAs(tcExcelFile, xlWorkbookNormal)

*-- delete CSV file
IF FILE(lcTempDbfFile)
   DELETE FILE (lcTempDbfFile)
ENDIF

*-- close Excel
loXls.application.quit()

RETURN lnRetVal

Mike Gagnon
Register to rate this FAQ  : BAD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 GOOD
Please Note: 1 is Bad, 10 is Good :-)

Part and Inventory Search

Back
Top