If just
installed the new FlexCel Studio for VCL 5.0 and some questions. Is it true,
that there are no graphical components anymore, which have to be placed at a
form and that there is no FlexcelGrid anymore?
Starting
your sample programs you are using the TStringGrid for showingthe content of an excel sheet.What is great
is, that with the new version VBA scripts are now executed, but unfortunately the graphical
formatting like lines or cells with colored backgrounds is not working anymore. You are using the
TStringGrid within your example. So have change this into a TAdvColumnGrid, but
it doesn´t changed the result. So my question is, will there be a new Flexcel
Grid for showing the Excel-Sheet in the
future or is there another way to show the Excel-Sheet as designed?
About non visual components, yes, now they are just classes, because being a "component" doesn't add anything to the them, and it adds some drawbacks. It would have been very simple to make them components, just make
TXlsFile = class(TComponent)
instead of
TXlsFile = class
but as said, it just adds noise. About FlexCelGrid that's a different story. We do plan a viewer component and probably a grid too (Even when the grid is not 100% confirmed). That is, for sure we are going to support displaying an Excel sheet, I am not so sure about allowing editing it, but I imagine we will do that too.
This new viewer component is based in the 5.0 rendering engine and so it is much complete than FlexCelGrid, even showing charts.
And the viewer (and probably grid) component is part of the rendering engine mentioned there.
About other alternative solutions, this week we should be launching the TXlsxAdapter mentioned in that blog that will allow you to use a v3 FlexCelGrid with the v5 engine (that can read and write xlsx files). We also have scheduled a TAdvExcelExport and TAdvExcelImport components that will export and import an xls/x file from/to Excel/AdvStringGrid, including formatting, images, etc, in case you prefer to go with the AdvStringGrid solution. Of course it will never be as good as the native FlexCel Viewer, but AdvStringGrid does allow much more editing features than what a FlexCelGrid would allow.
Well, as you can see we do have a very tight schedule, so I am going back to work ( i am doing the final testing in AdvExcelExport right now). As said, there will be a lot of news soon.