Import text from Excel to string-variable

[Jay]

Hello, I want to import text-data from an excel-sheet to a string-variable, e.g. for assigning this text as a legend.
Is there any possibility to get this working with EViews 5.1 programming?

[jthodge]

In the import dialog box or on the READ command, enter a "$" after the name of your alpha series.

[Jay]

That's not my problem, but how to get the text from the alpha series to an variable...

[edit]
As far as I've tested up to now, @elem(alpha, 1) generates a numeric value ... quite useless, when the content should be "UBS" or something.
Is there any similar function to @elem for my alpha series to extract a string from it?

[EViews Gareth]

try @elem(alpha,"1") (assuming your workfile is undated)

[Jay]

Yesterday I found out, that %string=alpha(1) works (the description was not that clear in the manual). But your hint works as well, though I don't understand, why the quotation marks are undocumented.