Report Studio - IMPORT FROM EXCEL FILE

[james899]

I found a post of similar title back in Oct, 2008 and it said to make an ODBC connection to Excel with a DSN name of the excel file in order to use a file from excel. I have a few questions for further clarification.

1. Is that the only way? I want normal users to have this capability. The Hyperion product has an advanced option that allows user to identify an excel file in the box when entering filter or 'criteria' values. Normal end users had this ability not just developers.

2. If that is the only way to do it then how do I use the excel file as the list of values to limit a field in the database for a report? A list of account numbers would be the example I will be using. Sometimes that is the only way to identify the target data but if there are too many to type then an input file saves time.

3. Do I need a Title cell in the excel file matching the name of the database field or only the values?

4. What if the input file is a .csv or .txt

[MFGF]

Cognos 10 now provides the ability for an author to include data from a text file without involving any re-modelling in Framework Manager or setting up ODBCs etc. This is not available in Cognos 8 though.

Regards,

MF.

[melee]

Quick question MFGF - is 10 the next version after 8.4.1? I'm confused about the version numbers

Edit; sounds like a silly question, I know, but 10 is nowhere in our roadmap

[CognosPaul]

I'm not sure that this method works with Excel, but if all you want is to allow users to filter based on data from a local file try going over this document:

Upload Local File Picklist Values
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/page78.html

[MFGF]

Quick question MFGF - is 10 the next version after 8.4.1? I'm confused about the version numbers

Edit; sounds like a silly question, I know, but 10 is nowhere in our roadmap

Not silly at all. Cognos 10.1 is the next release after 8.4.1. It was released on 25th October 2010, and is available to download from IBM now (provided you have maintenance with them).

Regards,

MF.