I can understand from my post that it would appear that I preach and it stops there.

I also deal with clients. Mostly groups of people, not individuals.

In this specific case, the truth is, it can't be done. Sure, it *looks* like it's being done- but there's no way to truly guarantee it. The only people that could really guarantee that the output is correct are the people with access to 100% of whatever a excel file is *supposed* to be.
And unless you're working for M$, you cannot honestly assure the client that not only does it *look* like it works, but it *works*.

Dealing with weird transformations of proprietary format and junk like this- opens your company/institution to possible danger.

There is are a couple of ways to do this properly. Either manually via the gui that M$ provides- or via some M$ development java or c++ dev lib they provide (they must have something).

Anything else, and you can't guarantee your client that you are outputting true xxx files.

Now, I work with proprietary format junk from time to time. But I do not output proprietary format. I can guarantee the client that the output is what it is.
It doesn't just look like it works, it works.

When faced with situations like these, I've found ways around it- to still solve the problem. It's been good so far.

If users assimilate 'Word' with a text file, it's the fault of people like you and me that just want to take a paycheck and not educate users.

put an end to word attachments

In reply to Re^3: export to excel in CGI by leocharre
in thread export to excel in CGI by sir_com

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