How To Use OLE Automation to Add Data to Excel Sheet

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This article was previously published under Q142193

SUMMARY

OLE Automation provides a way for Visual FoxPro for Windows to interact with other OLE-compliant applications. Using OLE, the Visual FoxPro program can start a Microsoft Excel session, open a workbook, select a worksheet from the workbook, place data into a cell or range of cells, print a worksheet, save the updated workbook, and close the Microsoft Excel session. This article shows by example how to do just that.

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MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

Open a new workbook in Microsoft Excel 5.0 or Microsoft Excel 7.0 (part of Office 95) or Microsoft Excel 97 (part of Office 97), so that the program example in this article will work.

Select sheet 3 by clicking the tab at the bottom of the worksheet, and enter the following data into the spreadsheet:

      Enter         In Cells
      ----------------------------
      Part #        A1
      Sales YTD     B1
      1             A2 through A4
      2             A5 through A7
      3             B2 through B7

On the Microsoft Excel Data menu, click Subtotal. The resulting dialog box should show that at each change in Part #, the function 'SUM' adds the subtotal to 'Sales YTD' and display that summary below the data. If so, click OK.
Click the tab at the bottom of the worksheet for Sheet 1 to restore the workbook's default page to Sheet 1.
Save the workbook. Then close the workbook, and exit from Microsoft Excel. For the following example code, the workbook has been saved as
```
      C:\XLSheets\Testbook.xls.
					
```

In Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, create the following program named oleExcel.prg:

*** Program oleExcel.prg *****
#DEFINE xlLandscape 2
#DEFINE xlDoNotSaveChanges 2

DIMENSION laDemoData(4)      && For some Visual FoxPro users, data
laDemoData(1)= 1024          && could come from table or view
laDemoData(2)= 2048
laDemoData(3)= 5120
laDemoData(4)= "The Sample Message"

loExcel = CREATEOBJECT("Excel.application") 

WITH loExcel
   .Application.Workbooks.Open("C:\XLSheets\testbook.xls")
   .Application.Worksheets("Sheet3").Activate  && Select sheet
   
   .Range("b2").Value = 14444          && constants as data
   .Range("b3").Value = 25555
   .Range("b4").Value = 30001

   .Range("b6").Value = laDemoData(1)  && variables as data
   .Range("b7").Value = laDemoData(2)
   .Range("b8").Value = laDemoData(3)
   .Range("a12").Value = laDemoData(4)

   .Worksheets("Sheet3").PageSetup.Orientation = xlLandscape
   .ActiveSheet.PrintOut  && Example of printing the worksheet

   .Visible = .t. && See the results
   =MESSAGEBOX("Click OK to close Excel.") && Keep the program running, 
                                           && so Excel isn't stranded

   .ActiveWindow.Close(xlDoNotSaveChanges)
   .Quit()
ENDwith

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REFERENCES

Examine the Microsoft Excel Help topic "Application Object" and the many topics that are introduced in the Properties and Methods lists of that topic.

For more information about many of the concepts in the example program, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

139051 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/139051/EN-US/ ) How To Select Cells in Microsoft Excel by Using OLE Automation

132535 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/132535/EN-US/ ) PRB: Releasing Object Variable Does Not Close Microsoft Excel

138398 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138398/EN-US/ ) PRB: Release may not Remove OLE Objects from Memory

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