Sage 100

This appears to be a very valid point - as sent by a customer moments ago: I've converted all of our most frequently used jobs to use tab delimited text files in VI, except for one that is a bear and still uses xls4. Trouble is, we're on Office 2010 now and that version of Excel will real xls4, but won't write to it. Does Sage have any plans to support a more recent version of Excel files? I'm loathe to keep an older version of Office on my machine just for this one thing. Also, why does VI insist on clearing everything on the Data tab when you change the import file type? It's very frustrating.

Well, the good news is that they fixed the issue of VI clearing the data tabs when changing data source (v4.5). The bad news is that they fixed it by not allowing you to change the data source at all. But that is easily worked around by creating a new VI, then copying from the old VI and changing the data source at that point. Cludgy, but workable. I would bet that this work around is functional in older versions VI. I agree what a PITA when your data fields are blown away.... Are they using VI for EXPORTING? It sounds like it. If so, I guess my question is why? I gave up on VI exports in 2005 when that version of MAS would not write the header description of the column. Once I learned how to do the Excel query, I never went back. And once you figure out queries, you are half way to learning pivot tables...... And regarding future plans for fixing this, you should ask the customer to develop a request to Sage and justify it by the amount of recurring revenue this will generate. Good luck breaking the news to them!

The latest versions (4.4 or higher) support XLSX files. I've had much better luck using those than I used to using the XLS files. Even dates are coming correctly, which sometimes used to give me fits.

Thanks for the feedback. I've had my heart broken so often with Excel file format issues that I'd be very hesitant to go out on a limb and recommend a customer upgrade solely to have better Excel compatibility. Seems that with each release of Excel the file source somehow breaks. I guess it's great if you can work an hourly deal where the customer will pay for the trial and error and not claim it's a bug and therefore not billable.

Thats why everything is tab delimited now. I refuse to touch anything but that import type. And as I indicated early, Excel Query does it all for me.

+1 for Jeff''s comment: Exporting is all done through Excel queries. If they need something scheduled, then use Access with some macros.

I have a decent sized export job coming up shortly. It would involve potentially creating half a dozen exports at the same time on a monthly basis. Is there a way to automate the creation? I was leaning toward Crystal simply because it seems to have a good set of tools if the customer decided they wanted to go and automatically export and email the files. Wondering if you've used anything similar to automate Excel exports.

Crystal? Really? I would use MS Access because you can do everything from export to a text file to send to a FTP site. Plus you can schedule with just the basic Windows scheduler.

There are a number of good reasons Crystal might be the first choice - not the least of which is that it's included free with every license of MAS so you are assured that the software is available for use.