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prosenjitb1139
October 31, 2022
Question

View, edit and save excel to appian

  • October 31, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 0 views

Hello All,

I need to display excel within appian UI (interface may be). I need to edit the excel and save it back to where it was (knowledge Centre).

How can I implement it? any suggestion is appreciated.

4 replies

csteward
csteward
October 31, 2022

I would suggest starting with the Excel Tools plugin which has a number of features for reading and creating excel documents.  From there let us know if you have any specific questions.

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prosenjitb1139Author
October 31, 2022

This plugin can read the data from excel. I like to display the entire excel in appian and edit it the way I edit from my excel in local computer. Can I do it?

csteward
csteward
October 31, 2022

You cannot imbed Excel functionality itself directly within Appian, but generally you can accomplish this by:

1) Read the Excel data into a CDT (I prefer fn!readExcelSheetPaging() from the plugin)

2) Display/Edit the data from CDT in an Editable Grid

3) Write the CDT to your Data Store

4) Export the Data Store Entity to Excel

The trickiest part here is typically around formatting, this will essentially clean the excel file.  There was a deprecated service we still use on occasion, Export CDT to Excel, which maintains formatting via a template - however there is no real replacement to this deprecated function yet OOTB.

If you have any further questions can you describe your use case, how you envision the process working, is this a standardized Excel file etc?

mikes0011
mikes0011
Brainy
October 31, 2022

The only workaround I've found so far to display Excel files direclty embedded within an interface (in any capacity whatsoever) is via the newer paid plug-in called "PDF Tron".  I don't think it'll let you edit and save an excel - though it *might* let you save a PDF copy of your edits, I'm not sure.  There's a free preview version of the plug-in I was able to get working a few months ago when I first tried it, so you could check it out and see if it gets you any closer to what you need.

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