Excel: Contents of QEREADME.TXT from Excel 4.0 for Windows

• Microsoft Excel for Windows version 4.0

SUMMARY

Below is the contents of the QEREADME.TXT, which is located in the EXCEL subdirectory after installation. The text describes various considerations for the installation and usage of Q+E. The last section contains information regarding documentation errors.

Notes on using Q+E for Microsoft Excel

Contents

   Outdated Driver Files
   QE.EXE
     dBASE IV Compatibility
   QE.XLA
      Command Equivalent Functions
      SQL Query Command
      Text Files
      "Remote Links Exist" message
   Errata: Q+E for Microsoft Excel User's Guide

Outdated Driver Files

If you previously installed a version of Q+E earlier than version 3.0a, the following driver files will have been copied to your Windows \SYSTEM directory: QEDBF.DLL, QESS.DLL, QEXLS.DLL, QETXT.DLL and QEXLA.DLL. Q+E versions 3.0a and later install new versions of these files in the directory containing EXCEL.EXE. When you install Q+E with Excel, Setup adds the Excel directory to the Path command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that, after restarting your computer, Q+E will find the new drivers instead of the older versions. If you install Q+E separately from Excel, or choose not have Setup modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, Q+E will not find the new drivers and you will receive the following message:

  The DLL for this source is out of date. Reinstall the driver
  or remove the directory containing the old DLL from your path.

1. Remove the following files from your Windows \SYSTEM directory: QEDBF.DLL QESS.DLL QEXLS.DLL QETXT.DLL

2. Add the directory containing Q+E to the Path command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

QE.EXE

dBASE IV Compatibility

By default, Q+E operates on dBASE files according to dBASE IV compatibility. For most uses, ANSI compatibility provides more predictable results in terms of handling the sorting, averaging, counting, and displaying of Null values. Also, using UPPER and LOWER functions according to dBASE IV compatibility does not change the case of international characters. To change your compatibility default to ANSI, select Options in the dBASEFile Open dialog, select ANSI as the compatibility, and choose OK with the Set Default checkbox selected.

For a more thorough explanation of the differences between dBASE IV SQL and ANSI SQL, refer to Appendix A, "Using Q+E with dBASE", in your "Q+E for Microsoft Excel User's Guide."

Changing or adding records in the Q+E Data Form dialog will not update or insert new records until you move to the next record or exit Data Form.

If you will be exchanging text files between Q+E and Microsoft Excel, be sure to save them with a tab separator and a .TXT extension. If you are saving the file as a .CSV file, be sure to use the separator indicated in your Microsoft Windows Control Panel.

Field Names from Microsoft Excel Documents

Q+E encloses field names from Microsoft Excel documents that contain spaces or lowercase letters with the ` character. To avoid possible conflicts with extracting data to Microsoft Excel, or specifying criteria, use only uppercase characters in your ExcelFile database tables, and use underscore characters instead of spaces.

Note: It is recommended that you do not execute database functions while in workgroup mode.

QE.XLA

Command Equivalent Functions

Many of the command equivalent functions in QE.XLA turn off error checking at run time. If you use QE.XLA command equivalents and error checking in a macro, insert ERROR(TRUE) following the QE.XLA command equivalent to turn error checking back on.

SQL Query Command

QE.XLA provides a SQL Query command for sending SQL statements directly to Q+E. When using this command, include the source name in the table specification of the FROM line. This tells Q+E which source to use in opening the file.

For example, "SELECT * FROM dBASEFILE|C:\emp.dbf" selects all the records from the dBASE file named "emp.dbf", located in the root directory. If you will be saving queries from the SQL Query dialog to be opened by Q+E, include the Q+E headerline "Q+E 3.0 for sourcename" as the first line in the statement, where sourcename is the name of the source for Q+E to use in executing the specified query.

SQL Query allows you to run just a portion of the text in the SQL Query dialog by selecting that text prior to choosing Run. If no text is selected, SQL Query sends the entire statement to Q+E.

Text Files

By default, all fields in a textfile database table will be read as character fields. To extract formatted data, or do extracts on data such as dates or numeric values, select the "Guess Data Types" option in the Q+E Open Textfile Options dialog and select the Set Default checkbox. Fixed Length Files will always be read by QE.XLA as a single column of data. For best results, open the Fixed Length file first in Q+E or Microsoft Excel, parse the information into columns, and save it as a character-delimited file.

"Remote Links Exist" Message

Closing a file after extracting information from an external database displays the message:

   Remote links to document exist. Close anyway?

Errata: Q+E for Microsoft Excel User's Guide

Chapter: 9, Using Microsoft Excel to Access Data on External Databases

Section: Using Macro Functions with Q+E Function: DB.DELETE

          Page 68:
          The heading shows only the question form of the function.
          There is a standard form as well. Also, change DB.DELETE?()
          to DB.DELETE() -- no question mark in the second-to-last line
          in the paragraph below the heading.

          Page 71:
          The second argument should read "paste_fields," not
          "fieldname." Also, when using this function, use one or the
          other argument (or neither), but not both.