I've giving my Domino XML link to Excel with a chart for years. (link) This week I wanted to add some of the cool Excel 2007 presentation options. The problem was that Excel, when it created the import schema, made my "freight" value a string. So "Data Bars" didn't work until I converted the column to "Currency" or "Number". Now I could have just added a schema to my Domino XML but I'm way to lazy for that. So instead, hours were spent poking around Excel to solve the problem. If we converted the column, it worked until the data was refreshed....ugg.
So I dug into the Open XML of the "DominoXMLChart2007.xlsx" file. To do this, just rename the file to end with ".zip" instead of ".xlsx". Then open the ZIP file and poke around. First I found an xmlMaps.xml file and it had the Freight value set to String. After changing it to integer and renaming the file back to .xlsx, the problem wasn't solved. No change. uuug. Next I found a "Table1.xml" file. It had the table column format set to String. A change to integer here did the trick. So I reposted the demo. If you have Excel 2007, give it a try.
Now if the Microsoft folk would only let me tweak the XML map and table definition in the UI, life would be good.
Excel demo fixed with Open XML05/01/2008 10:54 AM
