Possible to have webpage pull data from excel file?

[IamDavid]

Been looking into this for a simple solution at work to give more people, easier access to a highly used spreadsheet. I don't want to set up a server for this if at all possible. Just a simple web page located on a shared drive and give everyone a shortcut from their desktops.. Most the people have very limited computer knowledge.

Here's kind of a simple discription:
Current:
-Excel Spreadsheet pulls info from 2 very old informix databases every morning @4:00AM
(Spreadsheet can become large, over 8mb.)
-Spreadsheet is then hosted on a shared drive and sent out via email to around 15 people..
-Additions or corrections are made periodicly throughout the day to the main sheet on shared drive. So everyone isn't on the same page by the end of the day.

I know it's a very stupid way to do what we do but I can't change the 2 databases at all or the need to first inport needed data into an excel spreadsheet.

What I'd like to do:
- 4am, spreadsheet pulls info like normal..
-Host webpage on shared drive with easy access and have the page pull all info off spreadsheet and display it everytime the page is opened or refreshed..


Is this possible? Without adding anything new?


Thanks for any help!!

 

[DaveSimmons]

You could put the excel sheet itself on the shared drive, just be sure it's read-only for users.

A html page could include a link to the sheet in the same folder, but I don't see how that's better than having people open the sheet directly.

 

[Ken g6]

I'm confused, so let's look at it from a different perspective. What is it you want the users to be able to do? Do you want them to:

1. Always see the same spreadsheet throughout the day, no matter how someone else changes it? (Can you make it read-only and send out a link to the shared drive?)
2. Merge their changes to the spreadsheet throughout the day? (Can you make it a shared workbook?)
3. Automatically see changes to the database imported into the Excel file throughout the day? (That's probably hard.)
4. Something else?

 

[IamDavid]

Thanks guys for the quick responses. I'll try to clarify what I was wanting..

End users would see basicly whats on the spreadsheet. Completely read only. Everything pullled out of the spreadsheet. Kinda like what you'd see when saving excel files as html docs.
Opening a web page would be 100X faster than trying to open an 8mb excel file off the shared drive.
I already have the spreadsheet pulling updates out of the database automaticly, just need a way to keep manual adjustment, hence the need for the excel spreadsheet.. I'd narrow it down to where only one or 2 people would make the adjustments to the spreadsheet.

I have somehting similar to this already in place for another need at work. Just don't have the pulling from the excel file capability.

 

[Markbnj]

Can't you use the spreadsheet as a data source? I seem to recall there was an obdc driver that would pull data from a spreadsheet. But if it is updated infrequently the easiest thing might just be to publish the spreadsheet as html and save it to a folder on the web server whenever it changes.

 

[IamDavid]

Probably right Mark, that's the easiest way I think..
I think sing the ODBC driver would require a site being set up..

 

[Aluvus]

I would solve this problem, as I would solve many problems, with Perl. The simplest solution (assuming your data never contains commas) would be to install xls2csv; if your data may contain commas (but not tabs) you could instead copy-paste from this Perl Monks page. In any event you will need the Spreadsheet:arseExcel module from CPAN. The output of either of these scripts could easily be knocked into an HTML table.

It sounds like you may only have Windows boxes to play with, in which case this approach (particularly pulling in modules from CPAN and hoping they work on Windows) would probably not be appealing. Here is a more Windows-centric approach.

Any of the above solutions could be run on whatever time interval suits you. And could be hacked together in about half an hour.

Of course, if you don't know (and don't want to learn) any Perl, this will all be fairly useless to you.