Excel to Flash 5

[TO_Web_Group]

I am building a Flash Presentation for a school project, and I was hoping that someone can help me.

I have a large number of excel spreadsheets that I would like to import into Flash, and modify the way they look (Background color, etc ...)

I can do it the brute force way of just copying and pasting, but I was hoping that there might be a way to dynamically load the information into Flash and/or format it, so that when I modify the spreadsheets, my presentation would be updated automatically.

I would love it if someone could send me an email or post a response and either point me in the right direction (to a tutorial) or give me a rundown on how to achieve this.

Thanks,

Bryan Jaskolka
Toronto, Ontario
smurfsax@home.com

[Musicman]

Hi,

you will probably have lots of text fields in flash; so you should plan on saving the excel data as text (csv) files and use some kind of script to convert them into flash variables

Musicman

[ashwinv]

Hi
In Flash 4 if you right click on the main movie and say Insert Object, you can then choose Microsoft Excel Worksheet or Microsoft Excel Chart.

Another Option is just taking a screen dump of the spreadsheet and then croping it for just the valid info.

Hope it helps

Ash

[chinkle]

Save your spreadsheets as .csv and use Generator. If it's just for a presentation.

[niteboyzzz]

yep, setting the excel file as an external variable is the way to go, but you have to keep all files in the same directory...Then if you have any knowledge of the actionscript, you can call it up and manipulate the information a bit, depending on how you're gonna present it...

[TO_Web_Group]

Essentially, the presentation is being built in Flash. Optimally, I will export it as a Windows self-contained .exe file AND a .swf file so that I can put it on a CD as well as offer it on my project's website.

Would that still work with Generator?

Can I export Excel as a tab-separated variable file, and use actionscript to manipulate the data via an array? Someone told me that this was the way to go ... is there a better way of doing it? or should I go with this.

Thanks for any help,

Bryan

[Musicman]

Hi,

csv format makes it possible to use scripting languages to interpret the data (neither perl nor php would understand xls files). The format is still very different from what AS expects.
If I understood your first post right, you are not going to alter the excel files too often, so I'd suggest to get one of the scripting languages on your computer and create some script that transforms csv files into flash vars

As far as generator is concerned: it is not the only program that can create dynamic content - and maybe some actionscript can do it as well

If you were to use one of the generators, you'd probably be using it in the same way as a scripting öanguage - on your own computer to generate the content that is going to the web or the cd

Musicman