It's always good to be able to get your ManuSoft data into other programs for further analysis or whatever. Anything that saves you tedious rekeying of data is a good thing, and is what computers are good at. A common requirement of our users is to be able to export some or all of their ManuSoft data into Excel in order to further manipulate it in some way.

The oldest way of doing this was to use the ManuSoft Report Generator to create a report with the data you wanted to export. You configured the columns, printed/exported the report to a text file, then opened that file in Excel. There, you had to go through an import wizard, confirming where the column breaks were and potentially what data type (text, number, date, etc.) each column was. Now you had your data in Excel and you could manipulate it how you chose, but when you came back a month later say, to do the same sort of thing, you had to go through the whole process again. But this method is still available today and is useful for one-off "quick and dirty" exports from ManuSoft.

Starting with ManuSoft v6.2 we created an ODBC link into ManuSoft databases. This allows you to grab information from ManuSoft from inside Excel itself, using the "Get External Data" feature with Microsoft Query. The advantage of doing things this way is that the Query is saved with the spreadsheet. This means you can reopen the spreadsheet days or months later, hit the "Refresh" option and have the latest ManuSoft data appear, without any need to rebuild things from scratch.

In v6.5 of ManuSoft we have introduced a new way which runs a middle ground between these two approaches. The first thing to consider here is the fact that now all ManuSoft reports are Crystal Reports it is possible to export them straight to an Excel file, which you can manipulate. But depending on the complexity of the report your results will vary - some reports come out looking all "neat and tidy" in Excel, other's can be a bit of a mess. The latter is true for the default report used by the Report Generator. But in v6.5 it is now possible to specify a particular Crystal Report to be used by the Report Generator, and by using this feature, and by using a particular Crystal Report, it is possible to very quickly create Excel spreadsheets straight from your ManuSoft data.

Firstly, go to the ManuSoft Support Site's Miscellaneous Files section and download the Export.rpt file and save it somewhere like your ManuSoft program folder. Next, in the ManuSoft Report Generator, create a report and on the "Other Criteria" tab set the "User Defined Report" field to "M:\Export.rpt" (where M:\ is where you saved the report). It doesn't matter whether the "Printout Style" is set to Print or Export. You can now print the report to screen using the "Printout" button. The report isn't very  much to look at (all the fields are very small, so almost all the text will appear truncated), but you can use the Crystal Report Viewer's "Export" button to save the output straight to an Excel spreadsheet. Open the saved spreadsheet in Excel and use its "Autofit" option to widen the column widths to display all your data, and you're done!

MDBC Reports are a powerful part of the ManuSoft System. They allow users to view Crystal Reports based on your ManuSoft data even if they don't have the full Crystal Reports product installed. We have many sample reports on our Support Web Site, and also run training sessions on creating Crystal Reports.

The MDBC Reports menu allows for up to 100 reports to be defined in the system. For each report you do several things: give it a name, enter the path to the report, and if any .DAT files are being used they all have to be ticked so that the program knows to copy the files into your User folder, so that the report is run using the latest data. After a while, this last part in particular can be hard to keep control of, and it's particularly tedious to change all these settings if, as part of your v6.4 or v6.5 upgrade, you change many of your reports from using the .DAT files to the .DBF files (and so they no longer need to be ticked.)

Enter another Excel Spread Sheet to the rescue! The MDBCReptSetup.xls spread sheet (you'll find it in the Miscellaneous Files section of the Support Web Site) allows you to quickly and easily see and change all the settings related to your MDBC Reports Set Up. Simply open the spread sheet (making sure you allow Macros to be enabled), click the "Load Settings" button and enter the path to your WORK.DAT file  (usually "N:\", though you may wish to initially start by working on your "C:\ManuPlay\" folder.) The spread sheet will be filled with all the entries in your MDBC Reports menu. The initial columns are fairly self explanatory, simply following the fields in the setup dialog of the MDBC Reports program. The columns with the titles rotated 90 degrees correspond to all the check boxes for the .DAT files. There are a handful which have titles in curly braces (e.g. {Unused}); these columns should be ignored and left blank. For the other columns, enter either a "1" where you do want the file to be copied down (equivalent to ticking the entry), or a "0" or blank where you do NOT want the file copied down (equivalent to leaving the option unticked.)

Once you've made the changes you need, simply click the "Save Changes" button to write the new settings back to your WORK.DAT file. Like most of these "outside the system hacks" that I've talked about, only rudimentary error checking is made of the values you enter, so take care with any changes you make, and if in doubt, make the changes inside the system itself using the standard menu. (You did make a back up of your WORK.DAT file first, didn't you?)