Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I am a QB Mac user. There is a functionality in QB that supports exporting reports to Excel which I do not have nor want. Is there some way within OpenOffice to have this occur? I have also posted this question on the QB forums.

Edited to remove All Caps (TheGurkha, Moderator).

Have you tried to export from Quickbooks to Excel and then use Calc to open the Excel .wks document?

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Excel does not need to support QB nor does Calc. QB utilizes an installed Excel application in order generate xls files.
QB is founded on a database. There areODBC drivers to allow access from other database applications such as OOo Base. OOo Base serves as a bridge to Calc and Writer. Using Base via ODBC you can define your own database reports.
Google "Quickbooks +ODBC"

To all who have replied:

As I stated in my question, I do not own Excel, so how could I export to it? to: TheGurkha

Insofar as the ODBC thing goes, I am unable to find anything that I can use for MY MAC. They all appear to be windows-related interfaces

If QB is distributed for the Mac then there should be an ODBC drivers for that platform as well.
Search the QB home: http://quickbooks.intuit.com/search/sma ... stid=19158

I have now been able to determine, absolutely, that there is NO ODBC for QB and the Mac!!!

Welcome to the wonderful world of proprietary software.

If the information is exported in .csv format, then OOo Calc can read this, whether you have Excel or not. My limited information on Quickbooks (v6) tells me that QB exports data in Intuit Interchange Format (IIF) and that customising an IIF file or writing a translator is complex; it suggests it may frequently be quicker to hand enter the data.

pstoll wrote:As I stated in my question, I do not own Excel, so how could I export to it? to: TheGurkha

my mistake. I didn't realise QB needed Excel to be able to export to that format. Most other programs that export to different formats don't rely on the target application being installed for the export to work. If QB had been able to export to the xls format OOo Calc would have opened it.

TheGurkha wrote:Most other programs that export to different formats don't rely on the target application being installed for the export to work.

I'd rather say that using an installed MS Office is the way how "export to xls/doc" is implemented in 99% of all cases. It is very easy to code with the simple assumption that someone who wants xls/doc has Excel/Word. WIthout the MS software being installed, the programmer has to implement details of the binary file formats which can be very difficult as we know.

For the recent Windows versions of Quickbooks at least, select the "Create a comma separated file" option and save the resulting file, then open the file created with Open Office. Be sure to select the "comma" option in the process of opening the file into Open Office. The immediate result is not as pretty as the Excel export option would be, but all the information is there and you can make it look as pretty as you want within the limits of Open Office

JimV wrote:For the recent Windows versions of Quickbooks at least, select the "Create a comma separated file" option and save the resulting file, then open the file created with Open Office. Be sure to select the "comma" option in the process of opening the file into Open Office. The immediate result is not as pretty as the Excel export option would be, but all the information is there and you can make it look as pretty as you want within the limits of Open Office

You can even have a perfectly layouted professional report with charts, statistics, company logo, vertical or horizontal layout, grouping and everything Writer and/or Calc has to offer. But this would involve the database component which most users shy away from.