I can't format text data saved to Excel.

Question

I am using the attached VI to write text data to an Excel file. The problem is I can't reformat the numeric data to create charts.
Can someone shed some light on this?
Attachments:
M-51161-001 Write Excel File.vi ‏32 KB
sample1.xls ‏206 KB

Answer 1

The reason for this is that those cells have been stored as text. This is indicated by the little triangle in the upper left of the cell. The reason for this is that in your code you are creating a 2D array of strings and writing that out. Excel directly treats this as text information, and not numerical information. If you wish to treat those value as numeric then you need to select the entire range of cells and then click on the little yellow icon to display the context menu:
You can also change the way you're writing out the data by using numerical arrays for those columns. This would mean writing out the columns in sections rather than all at once.
Message Edited by smercurio_fc on 09-08-2008 10:17 AM
Attachments:
convert numbers.png ‏7 KB