Notes

If you want Excel to keep a field’s leading zeros when opening a CSV file using Excel, you can change it to =”value”.

For example, if you have a row with 4 values that looks like this:

test,00016102,test,test

Just change it to:

test,="00016102",test,test

To avoid getting the error “Your operating system does not meet system requirements”, I had to use User Agent Switcher to download the spreadsheet at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC300022771033.aspx for electric meter logging for energy efficiency. Then I used cabextract to extract the .cab file and used Open Office to view the 30002277.xltx file. Here it is saved using Open Office’s ODS format: electricity_tracking.

I was getting this error:

[Mon Jul 20 12:32:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.241.233] Premature end of script headers: elite_inventory.pl
[Mon Jul 20 12:32:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.241.233] DBI connect('my_database','my_user',...) failed: [INTERSOLV][ODBC Informix driver][Informix]Unable to load locale categories. (SQL-HY000) at C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/script.pl line 37

The fix involved modifying Apache’s environment variables using SetEnv in httpd.conf:


SetEnv INFORMIXDIR "C:/informix32"
SetEnv INFORMIXSERVER "isaac_net"
SetEnv DELIMIDENT n
SetEnv DBANSIWARN n
SetEnv CLIENT_LOCAL "en_US.CP1252"
SetEnv DB_LOCAL "en_US.CP1252"


This is because even if the variables are set in the registries in Windows (they are environment variables in Linux), the web server doesn’t use them.

Reference #1 and Reference #2.

You might need to use a different locale under Linux or Unix.

If you need to select the whole data region (it might included some empty cells) in Excel without selecting all cells (<CTRL>+<A>), click on any cell inside that group and then type: <CTRL>+<SHIFT>+<8>. It is very useful for large data sets.

You should then get something like this:

Try http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_rnib003503.hcsp for more keyboard shortcuts.

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The Globalsat BU-353 would be my first choice, it has very good reviews and it is waterproof.