Reading an Excel Spreadsheet on the CRIO

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by wireties

With respect, that is not a spreadsheet format. It is something exported in comma-delimited ascii format (which is text just with commas instead of spaces as field delimiters). Both will work but why go to the trouble of fooling with importing and exporting files to/from a spreadsheet. Many driver stations do not have an office suite installed and they are not cheap.

Not that it is a definitive source, but wikipedia lists CSV in the category of spreadsheet file formats :-) It may be also useful to note that LabVIEW has built in libraries for reading both native excel files and csv (although the excel library is only supported on windows). There are also several free programs that will handle simple spreadsheets just fine, and our driver station (and most current laptops) come with Office Starter, which is a reduced version version of Microsoft Office, that is free.

I'm not saying that a spreadsheet is the best option in all instances, but that there are valid reasons for using it. Since the problems are related to reading a file in general, suggesting a different file format isn't going to help.