Thanks for that Doulas,
I know what you mean, after 22 years in IT including 5 years as second tier support for a software development company; I have been on both sides of the telephone receiver in cases like this. Since Softrak want to say it’s an Excel problem, that’s fine with me. Myself and a programmer have determined how to make the changes to our processes to get this to work.

The only way that is going to work (Other than enabling dbase import/exports in the ledger.ini file, because we view this as a step backwards, and don’t want to do an upgrade to find it’s been removed again), is to do the following:
1. Change all our export templates to export to CVS delimited and use the txt file extension.
2. If the file requires editing in excel this will force the excel import wizard to process the files.
3. We can then set the formatting to any column we need to txt (if a cvs extension is used excel 2007 will not run the import wizard).
The next steps are one-time steps that cost us allot of money (we went through this when dbase was removed as a file type).
4. We have 7 or 8 programs that will need to be rewritten to take the txt file and converts it to dbase.
5. Then we have to test each program to the satisfaction of the CFO and compliance officer.
6. Then we have to update all the effected procedures that user are required to follow.
And this does not cover the cost of myself and a programmer working for 3 days on nothing but this issue.

For your offer of fresh eyes on the data/templates, nothing in the data or the templates have changed (other than we’re up to about 31300 accounts). Once the templates were updated 2 years ago we have had no issues with using excel export. Everything worked fine at the end of April. No Windows or Office patches were applied in May (because they all have to be tested before deployment). The only change in the system was the installation of Ledger 9.0C and the service pack 100511.

So on Monday when I outline the changes we’ll need to make to the Finance Department and compliance officer, I will be surprised if I’m not asked the question “Are we getting value from this product based on what we’re paying for it?” While it’s not the worst product I have to support, and in the past Softrak has been helpful, I get a bit testy when the first thing I’m told is “Not our fault, it’s that other company”.

Thanks for your help.