Linux command line convert utility?

[sadhunathan]

Greetings,

I am searching for a command line utility that will convert a tab delimited (or csv, etc.) ascii text file into a binary xls file. Might such a thing exist in the Open Office world?

In other words it would work like this

% convert_utility < myfile.txt > myfile.xls

or


% cat myfile.txt | convert_utility > myfile.xls

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

[ccornell]

You can run OOo as a service, and it'll listen on a defined port. You can then use it as a document converter.

If you poke around in the forum here, it's been discussed a few times. For example:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... =16&t=4767

You can also dig up various other bits if info, such as:
http://qugstart.com/blog/linux/openoffi ... onversion/
and
http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/w ... eConverter

So in short, it's possible to do, but it'll take some digging and effort since it's not a widely documented functionality.

[rudolfo]

As you you have a korn shell prompt in your post and you are using cat and not type I assume some Unix affinity and would suggest to do it the Perl way: CSV to Excel Converter.
Visual formatting will surely be limited, neither can you use templates as it would be possible with OOo Calc.

My problem is that I don't see the use of this conversion. If you target users who have Excel they should mostly get the same if the simply use Excel to open the csv file. Except for the long time annoyances that Excel internally converts 01234 to 1234, not matter how loud you scream at it, that 01234 is a string and not a number.
Okay, I admit to keep these annoyances away from the customer and doing it before hand on your own would save you a view hours of desperate support time. Surely, reason enought to process the conversion without Excel.