When I export from Report Writer to excel and then re-import back into Report Writer, my gl code field often re-imports as a date???? But....not always!!?? Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Sue - HPR

OK, I'll bite. What is "Report Writer"? And why are you exporting, then re-importing?

I am using "Financial Report Writer" in Adagio GL. It comes with the functionality to export to excel and import from excel. Presumably this is because there are things that can be done in excel that can't be done in Financial Report Writer, or can be done more efficiently in excel. For me, I sometimes have an existing report built in Financial Report Writer that I need to modify slightly (mainly sort in a slightly different way). I find excel is the most efficient way for me to do some of the things I can't do in "Financial Report Writer". However, the gl acct code field often comes back in date format when I import from excel back into "Financial Report Writer" which causes the report to no longer work. I'm not sure whether this is a possible glitch, or whether I am doing something to cause this??? Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions. Sue

Hi Sue,

If you open Excel and type the account number in question into a cell, do you see the same Date behaviour?

I have seen this once before where the account number had the characters necessary to be interpreted by Excel as an Extended Notation number (1.2 EE 85 or something like that). Excel tries to be helpful when it sees characters or numbers and attempts to format it in a way it assumes you want it in.

If your account numbers in a column of the Financial Reporter are just account codes with numbers, and not account-department pairs (which would be separated by a dash), then particular numbers might be interpreted by Excel as dates. You might be able t get around this by putting a leading apostrophe in front of the account number - ie '122309 instead of simply 122309. This would force this cell as text.

By the way, what kind of formatting are you doing in Excel that you need to export the financial spec, make changes, and then import it back in? You did mention sorting - what kind of sorting? I presume that your specs do not use SmartSheet.

The Import from ExcelDirect function is designed to assist people moving the spreadsheets they used to create every month in Excel into Financial Statements that they can print from the financial reporter. I'm having trouble picturing a need for the process you appear to be using.

Hi Softrak Support, thanks for the reply. I have all my accounts in an "Adagio Financial Report" and they have been entered as apostrophe acct-dep (ie. '1234-123). When I export to excel they are perfect (in exactly the same format). However, when I import back into FRW they do a variety of things. I have about 750 accounts, but here's a couple of examples. My acct '6500-12 comes back as 12/01/00, '6500-13 comes back as '6500-13, and '1020-1 comes back completely blank. I can tell that somewhere in the intuitive chain, dept 12 is being interpreted as Dec but dept 13 obviously isn't. I'm just not sure how to fix it. I'm not sure why '1020-1 comes back blank. If you try these three accounts, I think you'll see what I mean.

I know I could be doing things a better way and using Financial Report Writer more effectively but for now I just want to build a few reports to get through my year end. Sorting in excel seems the best way for now. In the spring I'll hopefully revamp my "Bad" Chart of Accounts and start using SmartSheet etc.

Thanks - Sue

Indeed the cells in Excel are being interpreted as YYYY-MM when using the Import from Excel Direct. At least that is what the end results are. I think that any account less than 1900 would come back as blank.

The best workaround that I could come up with is to insert an alpha character into the account number in Excel prior to the import into the Financial Reporter. Assuming that every account has a dash, I selected the account number column in Excel and did a Replace All; finding '-' and replacing with '-x' or something similar. Then after the spec is imported, I highlighted the same column in the Financial Reporter and did the reverse Replace All; finding '-x' and replacing with '-'.

Thanks for that; should work!!

Sue