xleXTRACTOR
xleINSERTOR  -  A
command-line insertion
utility for Microsoft Excel

xSolver  -   Non-linear,
least squares solver
add-in for Excel

bbExtractor  -  Extractor
for Blackberry .ipd backup
files

Visual Pipe Fu  -  Pipe
text from files, programs
or the web through
Unix-like utilities with a
simple, graphical interface

wxArCeEs  -  Graphical
user interface for RCS     
(Coming Soon)
Other Products
xleXTRACTOR is a simple command line utility that pulls cell data out of
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and sends it to standard output.  From there it
can be re-directed to another program, a file, wherever you want.
Figure 1
Figure 1 shows how to use xleXTRACTOR to
get the rectangle bounded by cells G4 and
H9 on Sheet1 of Workbook xletst1.xls as
shown in Figure 2.  

If you wish to specify a sheet by its ordinal
number instead of its name, use the number.
e.g.  xletst1.xls -r1!g4:h9
If the name of the sheet is a number like
2009, use quotes to treat the number as a
literal such as:
xletst1.xls -r'2009'!g4:h9
To change the delimeter,
use the -d option as in
Figure 3.
Figure 2
The -g option brings
up the interactive
screen as shown in
figure 4.
xleXTRACTOR uses object linking and embedding (OLE).  To use the utility you must have a working copy
of excel installed where you run it from.  The free xlviewer available from Microsoft will not suffice.
Figure 4
To set the
delimeter to a
TAB or some
other formating
character, use
the %asciival
notation.
%009 will produce a
tab, %013 will produce
a newline, etc.
You can describe a rectangle with Sheet and corner co-ordinates  as in figure 3a or use named
references.
Figure 3a
Figure 3
Figure 4 shows an Expense Statement workbook taken from the templates included in Excel.  The light
blue area denotes a rectangle containing expense information and given the range name:
'Expense_data'.  

That range can now be extracted by name as in figure 5a.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Or, you can use a named
cell/named range to set
the upper left corner and
an offset number of rows
and columns.  Figure 6
shows how to get the first
8 columns and 4 rows of
'Expense_data' by using an
offset of 7 and 3
respectively.  Set the
offset to zero if you only
want one row or column.
Figure 6
Figure 5a
Buy Now
Trial Version
If you don't have a copy of Excel on your system, you can use Visual Pipe-Fu which does not require
Excel.  The products have different capabilities and limitations which are outlined below.
  Visual Pipe-Fu
 xleXTRACTOR
 xliNSERTOR
Requires Excel
 No
Yes
 Yes
Can work with files that
are already open
No
Yes
Yes
Can be run from batch
file scipts
Yes
Yes
Yes
Can use named
cells/ranges
No
Yes
Yes
Includes utilities for
manipulating text and
scraping web pages
Yes
No
No
Can insert data into
Excel
Yes
No
Yes
Can extract data from
excel
Yes
Yes
No
Connects to SQL
databases via ODBC
Yes
No
No
Cost
$15
$7
$10
Visual Pipe-Fu does have a shell script execute tool, so you could use it in conjunction with
xleXTRACTOR/xliNSERTOR.  For instance if you need to insert/extract data to/from an open spreadsheet
and manipulate the text you can set up your collate, sort, replace script in VeeFu while calling the
xleXTRACTOR/xliNSERT from the shell script execute tool.