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Excel with SAP - An overview

Added by Markus Sehr, last edited by Ivan Femia on Dec 30, 2010

Microsoft Excel is not always a favourable format to exchange data with customers, suppliers and their IT-systems However, there are requests were the Excel format is mandatory. In the beginning, SAP only had a very limited support but in the meantime the integration of office in SAP is very good There are a lot of specific articles on the SDN about the Excel topic. The purpose of this blogis to give a short overview over various options to work with Excel Files in SAP and provide links with examples for the described options. There is no best" way to work with Excel files - each option has its advantages and disadvantages and usage depends on several factors

Writing Excel Files with SAP

Function Module SAP_CONVERT_TO_XLS_FORMAT Uses the Spreadsheet-Interface from SAP Office Integration (see below) Has a very simple interface (internal table, filename) Creates native binary Excel Certain ABAP Types may not be converted correctly to Excel Format (e.g. Date) Not every type of table can be used No changes to layout or formatting of the file possible No Support of multiple Sheets Not suitable for Background Processing

Interface I_OI_SPREADSHEET Belongs to the SAP Office Integration / Control Framework Allows to create more sophisticated Excel Files (Colors, Indivual Formatting, Multiple Sheets, Zoom, Hide Rows etc) Although a lot of formatting options exist, the usage is quite simple because the methods of the interfaces are selfexplaining Internally also uses OLE, but no OLE specific knowledge is required Can not be used for background processing Examples: Basic Use: See Code of FM SAP_CONVERT_TO_XLS_FORMAT Advanced Example (Embedded Macros and Pictures): Link Advanced Example (Pivot Table): Link Demoprograms in Package SOFFICEINTEGRATION

Function Module MS_EXCEL_OLE_STANDARD_DAT Has a similar interface as SAP_CONVERT_TO_XLS_FORMAT but different options and directly uses OLE Excel is opened after execution (can not be suppressed) Supports PivotTable, Header and Sheet Names but no further formatting options Can only be used for characterlike fields Example: Link

Microsoft OLE Compared to the previous methods, direct use of OLE offers the most options to create advanced excel files (e.g. print layout, header/footer etc) There are some major drawbacks: Knowledge of OLE specific Excel Commands necessary Poor performance Interference with user Limited error handling as execution of command is done outside SAP Not suitable for background processing Examples: Link1 Link2 Link3

Method CL_BCS_CONVERT=>STRING_TO_SOLIX Simple method to create Excel Files in Background Mode (which is already the main adavantage) Fields are written in a delimited text field and then converted to Excel with this method There are no formatting options

PI: SpreadSheetML SpreadSheetML is the XML description of an Excel File developed by Microsoft. It can be opned with Excel regulary. For a complete description of this technique, please refer to this blog. Advantages: Very performant Suitable for Background Processing Almost all Excel Options supported Easy to understand Built in Connectivity (i.e. send file by email etc)

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SAP Community Network Wiki - ABAP Development - Excel with SAP...

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/ABAP/Excel+with+SAP+-+An+o...

ABAP: SpreadsheetML PI is not the only option to create SpreadSheetML Files A very unconvenient option is to directly create the xml in a text variable Better is, to use the SAP built in XSLT-Prozessor that allows to transform DDIC structures into XML. However, this option also requires more manual effort then the PI solution Examples: Link1 Link2 Link3

Class ZCL_EXCEL Although SpreadsheetML Files are still compatible with newer Excel Versions, Microsoft changed to the OpenXML Standard with Office 2007 Word/Excel-Files consist now internally of several xml-files Class ZCL_EXCEL is a convenient openSource Suite to generate Excel Files according to this new standard The features of this suite allow producing high end excel files (drawings, graphs, conditional formatting, formulas etc) The suite works in background, is performant, plattform independant and is easy to understand Information on ZCL_EXCEL can be found on the ABAP2XLSX Homepage or in this nice blog. This Z-Class can be imported quite easily as a .nugg file Several Demo-Programs are available after importing the source code, all starting with ZDEMO_EXCEL*

PI: JavaExcel API Java supplies an API to create and read Excel Files in Java This API can be included in PI and could also be used to create Native Excel Files Similar to the SpreadsheetML Solution, Data structures that represent the Excel Content would be filled in SAP and PI would then hand over this data to the Excel API Information how to integrate the API into PI, can be found in the section on how to read Excel File with this API. The API reference can be found here.

FM GUI_DOWNLOAD / Method CL_GUI_FRONTEND_SERVICES=>GUI_DOWNLOAD Those do not really generate Excel-Files. They only can generate WK1 and CSV files which can also opened with Excel

3rd Party Converter Small tools are available to convert csv or wk1 into a native Excel file from command line. Those programs can be called from an ABAP Report. Given the other options above, this solution is listed but seems not be the perfect choice Various Converters can be found under http://www.processtext.com/

Reading/Importing Excel into SAP

Function Module TEXT_CONVERT_XLS_TO_SAP Has a simple interface (filename) Uses interface i_oi_spreadsheet from Office Integration Target DDIC structures can be indivually defined (as needed e.g. type i for numberic columns) Limited error handling No Support of multiple Sheets (Only the active sheet is processed) Not suitable for Background Processing Example can be found here *Interface i_oi_spreadsheet (Office Integration")* To have more flexibility and a better error handling, a direct use of the I_OI_SPREADSHEET Interface is recommended An example how to read Excel Files with multiple sheets can be found here

FunctionModule ALSM_EXCEL_TO_INTERNAL_TABLE Uses Microsoft OLE The interface of this function module is also very simple but the result is quite different from TEXT_CONVERT_XLS_TO_SAP: the generated internal table can not be freely defined the generated internal table contains row/column of the imported cell data area (start row, end row, start column, end column) must be defined cell contents can only be up to 50 characters long Because of the generic internal table that is used here, this method might be handy when the layout of the excel format tends to change and you need to find a dynamic approach in what cells you find the desired data.

Microsoft OLE The technique used for writing and reading the Excel file is the same (only difference is that the workbook must first be opened) Examples can eihter be found in the previous section of writing with OLE or by looking into the simple code of the FM ALSM_EXCEL_TO_INTERNAL_TABLE

JavaExcel API (via PI) The JavaExcel API integrated in the SAG PI System can convert native Excel Files into XML By default it uses the column names of the Excel File as XML tags XML Strcutures can then be automatically converted to DDIC Structures by the ABAP ProxyRuntime The advantage of the PI solution is that it also solves the problem of how to get the Excel File into the SAP System (e.g. by FTP, email, from a WebPage etc) Refer to this article how to integrate the JExcel API into PI.

Function Module GUI_UPLOAD Method cl_gui_frontend_services=>gui_upload Similar to GUI_DOWNLOAD the functionality is very limited as it can not process native Excel files (only Text Formatted files)

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SAP Community Network Wiki - ABAP Development - Excel with SAP...

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/ABAP/Excel+with+SAP+-+An+o...

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