Excel report doesn't work if Excel is not installed

[Onweerwolf]

Not sure why this is but I'm trying to create a report and export is an excel file but MM tells me that 'Microsoft Excel could not be found' and I should 'reinstall and try again'. Now i'm using a portable version of excel 2007 with which I'm very happy and I don't want to install the clutter that is Office.

Does MM actually need Excel to create a simple spreadsheet?

[Lowlander]

You need Excel to get an Excel report, if you don't use the CSV option instead (can be imported into a Spreadsheet program like Excel).

[Onweerwolf]

Why do we need excel installed to get an excel report?

[Lowlander]

Because it uses Excel to generate the report.

[nohitter151]

Why do we need excel installed to get an excel report?

.xls format is proprietary, you can't generate this type of file without the program being installed. Like lowlander said, you can just use the CSV format instead, it will work just as well in excel.

[rovingcowboy]

I believe the kingsoftware office can handle xls format, it does other ms office ones.

[dtsig]

I believe the kingsoftware office can handle xls format, it does other ms office ones.

Though I haven't tried 'Kingsoft Office Suite' i do use OpenOffice. It does xls format quite well.

I would think their api would allow creating xls format files.

[Onweerwolf]

So the .csv file does work. It's a little bit of a hassle but it's workable. Thanks.

However there is a problem with the .csv export. The songlength that MM exports into a .csv table is not correct when imported into excel. MM exports seconds as minutes when using .csv

You can compare to see for yourself. I used a song with a length of 2:56. Export once as .xls and once as .csv. Open the .csv in excel en the normal .xls file as well. Select the cell that contains the song length. In both cases it should look like '2:56'. However if you go -> format cells -> Number -> Custom and then select 'mm:ss'. The xls file will stay the same but the .csv import will change to 56:00.

[khelsing]

MM exports seconds as minutes when using .csv

I can confirm this behaviour. MM does not write the hours to the length field if the track is shorter than an hour. Excel and also Open/LibreOffice therefore automatically append ":00" to the field's content and then interpret the length as "hh:mm:ss".

Here's what MM outputs:

"Sting","Fragile","...all this time","4:35",2001,"Rock",-1,192,"E:\Media\Musik\CD\Sting - All This Time\01 Fragile.mp3","Media"

The correct output would be:

"Sting","Fragile","...all this time","00:04:35",2001,"Rock",-1,192,"E:\Media\Musik\CD\Sting - All This Time\01 Fragile.mp3","Media"

[Lowlander]

On line 138 of Export.vbs (in Program Files\MediaMonkey\Scripts folder) replace QAStr(itm.SongLengthString) with QAStr(FormatStrTime(itm.SongLengthString)). That would seem to give you the desired result (don't have spreadsheet software to test).

http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=10728

[Onweerwolf]

That worked. Great fix! Thank you.

[Onweerwolf]

There is another problem though. Foreign characters like 'Ș' appear as question marks in Excel when you import them from a .csv file that was exported by MM.

[nohitter151]

There is another problem though. Foreign characters like 'Ș' appear as question marks in Excel when you import them from a .csv file that was exported by MM.

Custom report supports unicode characters:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/brows ... om-report/

[Onweerwolf]

There is another problem though. Foreign characters like 'Ș' appear as question marks in Excel when you import them from a .csv file that was exported by MM.

Custom report supports unicode characters:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/brows ... om-report/

Nope. Doesn't work.

Edit: I shouted too soon.

It does work, but only with newer versions. 3.0 works, 2.8 doesn't. (I was running 2.8 ).

[Onweerwolf]

However, custom report has the same songlength bug as normal report.

Edit: which now that I think about is something that I already complained about in the custom report thread a long time ago, but it was never fixed.