Help for a SpreadSheet newbie?

[Tom Wiley]

I have to parse several years worth of timecards so that the bean counters
in the front office can do an audit. With Perl it is dead simple to
extract the info and build a nice set of reports. My problem is that they
want the results in a pretty Excel format and I know just enough about
spreadsheets to do a sum() - sometimes. I have pulled out the info and
put it into a comma delimited format and it imports into OO or Excel just
fine, but of course it has no formatting.

So, my questions... Can I build formatting into a CSV type file? I have
a feeling that the answer is no since when a file is saved as comma
delimited a message pops up informing that some formatting will be lost.

Or, are pre-made templates the answer? Never used them but I assume that
you can preformat rows and columns and then import a file into it,
although so far I have failed to find an import menu item. I think the
major problem here is my lack of an Excel book.

Or what?

Any spreadsheet gurus out there that can point me toward the proper
direction?

Thanx
Tom Wiley

[bgeier]

No, a comma separated file, is flat ascii only (at least to the best of my knowledge).

As a "down and dirty" quick fix you could do the import, then manually format the columns as they need to be.

For example, after you import the data, select the date column so it is highlighted, then right click, format cells -> select the Number tab, then select your preferred date format, repeat for each column you have, probably start time, end time, etc...

Of course, you would have to do this for each year of data you have.
You could probably record a macro to do it for you as you do the first one.