Excel Data Sources allow the user to create tables based off a Microsoft Excel spread sheet’s specified range.
Note: If the Excel Data Source is not available for use, see Under Data Source Type on the left, ensure Excel is selected.
Enter a name in the Data Source Name field.
Locate the excel file on the SharePoint site and add it.
Note: The Excel spread sheet has to exist in the SharePoint site in order to be utilised as a Data Source. If the Dynamic Path (next step) is to be used, this step of adding a spread sheet is still necessary. The initial Excel Data Source will be defining the structure of the other Excel spread sheets data when merged.
Once the .xlsx file is located and selected, click “Ok”.
Once the .xlsx file has been loaded, click on “Add Range”.
In the ExcelTableDialog window, the dropdown list will contain the worksheets that the spread sheet contains.
Select a work sheet from the dropdown list.
Enter in the known range or click on the “Lookup” button to open the Excel spread sheet to highlight the range manually to add it to the “Range” display box.
When done selecting or entering the range, click “Ok” on the “ExcelTableDialog” window and close the spread sheet.
Click “Ok” to confirm the selection.
Ranges that have been added can be edited or removed if the need be.
Click on the range then click on edit or remove.
Tables from the spread sheet can be edited via the Generated Tags pane.
Select the table and click the “Edit” button.
From the Add Tag window fields can be; deleted, added, the order adjusted, and the formats and names edited.
Note: When formatting the fields changing the data type should be changed carefully due to some formats not being compatible with others e.g. int32 and string.
Buttons:
- Add additional Tags to the table.
- Edit a selected existing Tag
- Delete a selected Tag
- Move a selected Tag up in the order.
- Move a selected Tag down in the order.
Once done with editing the Table, click “Ok”.
Once done with creating the Data Source, click “Ok” to add it to the Template.
The dynamic path options will be discussed below.
Dynamic Path
This setting is optional and not needed to add a regular Excel data source.
Once the Excel spread sheet has been added, the user has the ability to activate the Dynamic Path option. This allows the user to point to another Excel spread sheet (located in the same site-collection as the initial Excel spread sheet they added) that they want to retrieve data from. There are two different ways to achieve this and the options are elaborated below:
Note: If the Dynamic Path is to be used, the step of adding a spread sheet is still necessary. The initial Excel Data Source will be defining the structure of the data from the other Excel spread sheets data when merged.
No specified Physical Path
By activating the Dynamic Path option alone and not specifying a physical path to a dynamic data tag, will allow the data tag (that gets created by DocGeneration) to be accessed via the API (refer to the Software Development Kit (SDK) DocGeneration Generation Suite document) and allow paths of Excel spread sheets to be specified there.
To activate the Dynamic Tag, click the checkbox.
Once Dynamic Path is activated, setting up of the Excel Data Source can commence by skipping Specified Physical Path.
Specified Physical Path
This allows the user to set a path by selecting a string type input data tag which will need to contain the URL to the Excel spread sheet, from either of the following data sources; SharePoint and User-defined Data Sources. For more information on these data sources see the following sections: SharePoint Data Source & User-defined Data Source. One of these two types of data sources will have to be added to the template prior this step.
To activate the Dynamic Tag, click the checkbox.
Click “Map Tag” button to select a string Data Tag from either a Default SharePoint Data Source or a User-defined Data Source. Once done, click Ok to confirm the tag.
Once the Data Tag for the Dynamic Path is selected, setting up of the Excel Data Source can commence in the following sections below.
Once the user has fully configured the excel data source, they can click on the “Ok” button to add it to the template.
Related Articles:
- For help on The Default Data Source, follow the step-by-step instructions here.
- For more information on Adding a SQL Data Source follow the step-by-step instructions here.
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