Hi Boris, Mike,

Thanks for the thorough explanation. Long time ago I developed a generic form, I call (passing a WinGrid) to let the end user export the grid to XLS, PDF or XPS. Since I do not use very exotic formatting strings, I'll stick with e.ExcelFormatStr = e.FrameworkFormatStr in the InitializeColumn event for the time being.

Thanks again and best regards,

Willem

Hi William,

Yes, the line of code you have here will work in most cases.

The reason the grid does not simply do this for you automatically is that DotNet Framework format strings are not always the same as Excel Format strings. There are strings you could use in DotNet that would not work in Excel and there's really no way for the grid to detect this.

So if the grid automatically set the format on the Excel cells, there is a possibility that the Excel worksheet would appear with an invalid format and the data would appear corrupt.

So we had to choose between the Excel sheet not containing any formatting, or the Excel sheet possibly containing a bad format which could result in the appearance of corrupted data or possibly even an error. We chose to make sure the data is always correct and not formatted, and to allow you, the developer to translate the format as needed.

Hello Willem van den Broek,

This definitely makes sense - if we need to add additional code to accomplish the same format, is there any reason not to use the above statement. I believe that in this case the manual approach of setting the format in the event is being used because you might want to set completely different format in the excel file. You might want to have format which differs from both the excel and .Net formats in the column.

I hope that this makes sense to you. Please let me know if I misunderstood you or if you need any additional assistance.

Hi Mike,

I just found this thread, because I was looking for a solution for some similar problems:

• UltraGrid column format: dd-MM-yyyy was shown in Excel like: d-M-yyyy;
• UltraGrid column format: HH-mm was shown in Excel like 1-1-1900 H-m.

According to your advise, I added this code to the ExcelExporter_InitializeColumn event:

Select Case e.FrameworkFormatStr
    Case "dd-MM-yyyy"
        e.ExcelFormatStr = "dd-MM-yyyy"
    Case "HH:mm"
        e.ExcelFormatStr = "HH:mm"
End Select

That does the trick

What I am wondering is this: I guess, we, the users, expect the column formatting in an exported Excel file - by default - to be the same as the column formatting in an UltraGrid. Therefore I do not understand why we have to add addition code to accomplish this.

Additional question:

After reading my statement, that I expect Excel column formatting always being the same as Ultra Grid column formatting, is there any reason why I should not use this line of code in the ExcelExporter_InitializeColumn event:

e.ExcelFormatStr = e.FrameworkFormatStr

Thanks in advance,

Willem van den Broek
The Netherlands

Mike,

Thanks, I have make it.