Exporting a Table Report Into Excel

The values on any table can be exported into an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis. This will enable the end user to generate reports based on their own Excel template.

This is configured in the Excel Exporting section of the table setup.


For the Excel interface to work the PC running the DNC-Max Server must have the MS Excel library functions loaded - the simplest way to do this is to install a copy of Excel.

Choose the table to export from the drop down box and then click the Browse button next to the 'Template File' to select the customer's spreadsheet template file (or one you have already created in Excel for them). Store the template on a network share that every client has access to and use a UNC name (\\servername\sharename\filename) rather than a mapped drive (F:\filename) as each MDC-Max client must be able to access the spreadsheet.

The template may be a simple spreadsheet or a highly customised one using macro's to generate complex graphs and tables from the information that MDC-Max inserts.

MDC-Max will create a use the template to create a new spreadsheet and you put this filename into the 'Filename' box. In the example above the name of the file is 'Cycletimes $REPORTSTARTDATECLEAN'. This generates a new file each day (if the report is a daily report) of the form: Cycle times 15-12-2009.xls (see the sample below)

$REPORTSTARTDATECLEAN is a system variable that gives a date in the form "12-12-2010" so we don't get extra "/" characters in the filename.

The 'Data starts at column' and 'Data starts at Row' boxes determine where the table will be inserted in the spreadsheet.


It is not always possible to know how much data you are going to generate so it is useful to create a spreadsheet template file with two sheets and reserve the first sheet for the MDC-Max table data. The second sheet can then be used for the graphs which are generated from the data as follows:


You can expand this method to generate a separate sheet for each machine with a chart alongside the data if you wish.