[sims] Unwanted Format Conversions

[CAM]

Is there any way to stop SIMS from converting everything into a string? It seems to do this if I output numbers from a report or from the AM7 Marksheet screen.

 

It really does get annoying when you want to work with numbers, export the data then having to highlight all the cells with a little green triangle in the corner and convert them from string to number format.

 

It's doubly annoying for dates that aren't exported in a proper date format. I have to add a column, use =DATEVAL( ) to convert it into a usable format, change the formatting to dd/mm/yyyy format and copy the value to the old cell.

 

Try explaining these to SLT or other end users just so they can start creating their own PivotTables, charts, etc! Am I missing some way to disable this or some Excel trick to do it for me automatically?

 

I appreciate that the SIMS Reporting Macros detail something about a "Fix for date values" in the comments but are they still required now Office packages have moved on? Or possible to disable them?

[vikpaw]

I think it's because they sometimes dump to an intermediate text file, before being parsed for reports / export.

 

As an interim measure, it might be worth creating some macros to do it for you. They can be easily shared.

We made some for my last place, not for SIMS, but the same principal, merged cells needed un-merging and data needed sorting. A couple of nice macros added to power users' toolbars with an icon. Works a treat.

 

It's only until SIMS 8 comes out, so you'll be golden in a couple of years