Generate Text files

[appleglaze28]

I was wondering, is there any way to specify what rows would be used to generate a text file. Like for example...I have like in active form the first 10 rows are for fomatting then I have the suceeding 8 as subnm function. I start my data entry at the 20th row...up until 35th row.But then I also have another table for data entry from thr 40th to the 55th. I just created the template this way to easily view all the data entry points or fields. I want to generate 1 text file for each.

How do I do this since there's not much details given on the Reference Guide for the ASCII or Text Output funtion for TI. Or is this more of a macro function?

[lotsaram]

You are talking about two entirely different things here!

Firstly why (oh why, oh why, oh why, oh why, ...) would you want or need to generate a text file of your active form? You already have a file, it is sitting right there in Excel staring you in the face, if you have a need to take a freeze of the data simply copy and paste values.

ASCIIOutput is a TI function to write a text file to disk. (Where the file can be written to is determined by where the TM1 service has access to, which may be quite different from what you can see and access via your network account.) Typically the data source for a ASCIIOutput would be a cube view but it could be any data source, with any amount of intermediate manipulation via TI. Yes you could quite conceivably fire off an ASCIIOutput from an action button on an active form whereby you pass in as parameters all the title elements and the subsets of your row and column dimensions and TI will then go and build a view and export it (easy enough to do, but then again why as a user could just take a snapshot of the report and achieve a very similar result.)

You can also right click a cube in Perspectives and choose the export option to spit out a CSV of a cube view (although as of 9.4 admin access is required for this feature) which might also achieve what you want to do.

[Martin Ryan]

if you have a need to take a freeze of the data simply copy and paste values.

Or make use of the save as values function in the TM1 Tools add in (see here) which will do multiple sheets in one go and save the file automatically.

Martin

[appleglaze28]

Well its for like creating a offline template...since I'm not an Excel or TM1 expert. Just kinda asking advise on the best way the be able to create text file or a way to load data from offline templates to the cubes?

Sorry I forgot to mention that part earlier on the post.

[Martin Ryan]

My colleagues have just been working on a such a template. They have hidden columns and rows that indicate whether the row/column is to be included in the export and then the VBA runs over the sheet to find out what to spit out into a csv file and transferred to an area for upload into TM1.

We do this because we have a world wide customer base and the network is too slow to allow them to access TM1 directly and (more to the point) licences for everyone are too expensive. If possible though, offline templates are best avoided.

Martin

[appleglaze28]

Is creating offline template better than just replicating the server locallly for those who have slow access to the network? Since if certain people in that area might want to try out the fast processing of TM1....though I'm not sure how the licensing would be for replicating servers.