Excel Chart / Table in FMP9

[MuthaEarth]

I am exploring a possible Excel chart layout, which depicts count of articles(g.myarticles) by Author (g.author). Is there a way to maintain a viewable/printable Excel chart without having to go outside of FM to update data series? I mean the data is right there in the database file, so it would seem likely, but have not found an Excel feature other than Export Field Contents, which sort of defeats the purpose.

 

Here's what I'd like to have happen. When supervisor runs a summary report by year, get excel chart depicting count of Articles for each user (always x axis) over the permissible year range (2004-2008).

 

Or, when supervisor runs a summary report by category, get excel chart showing count of articles contributed by each user within each listed category.

 

Has anyone ever successfully created such a monster? Or, was FMP9 not made for spreads?

 

cheryl

[Ender]

I think you could export your FileMaker data to something like Merge (or maybe Excel), then have an already set up Excel worksheet with the formulas and charts in place, but have that worksheet pull from an external data source (the exported data).

 

I had something like this setup with FM6 a few years ago. That worked pretty good. The drawback is that you're fiddling with multiple applications, and that can make troubleshooting difficult.

 

If possible, you might look into a charting method that keeps everything with FileMaker. With FM9, there are some nice flash based services/tools that can do this, utilizing the web viewer. Or there are charting plugins, like xmChart.

[MuthaEarth]

Ender,

 

Thanks for your feedback. Will hold off on this until FM buys Micro$oft!!!

 

cheryl