Making Eviews open excel

[ian.e.preston]

I have a program that imports data from an excel file. For some reason it will only successfully import the data if I have the excel file open prior to running the program. This is not an issue with other excel files. What I'd like to do as a hack-y solution is just call excel to open the file from my eviews program. Failing that I guess I'd like to find out why I can't pull from this particular file and fix it that way. Any tips?

[EViews Gareth]

Best thing to do would be to provide us with the Excel file so we can try and figure out why EViews cannot open it.

[ian.e.preston]

That does seem best. Here you go.
Import code is as follows:

Code: Select all

%secfrom = [path]\LTC_Sec_monthly.xlsx" import %secfrom range=Page1_1 @id Claim @destid @date

[EViews Jason]

EViews couldn't auto detect the date series 'claim' since it is out of order. It is in alphabetic order but not time order.

I also do not notice a difference as to whether or not Excel is open or not. In both cases, the above problem exist.

With that being said, try using

Code: Select all

import ltc_sec_monthly.xlsx range=Page1_1!$A$1:$L$189 colhead=1 na="#N/A" @freq M @id @date(claim) @smpl @all

[ian.e.preston]

Same issue. If I run it with the excel file closed I get this error:

Unable to determine date format of object CLAIM in [PATH] range=Page1_1!$A$1:$L$300 colhead=1 na="#N/A" @freq M @id @date(claim) @smpl @all

If I open the excel file first and then run the program it's fine.
Excel 2010 and Eviews 9 - July 23 2015 build.

[EViews Gareth]

Could you try updating to the latest version of 9?

[ian.e.preston]

I can't actually. IT at work has pretty strict version control. I'd have to make a whole business case etc.

[EViews Gareth]

Try opening the file in Excel, saving it locally, then closing down Excel and trying to open it in EViews. Does that work?

[ian.e.preston]

Saved the file to my desktop, it was on a network mapped drive before. Exact same issue.

[EViews Gareth]

What happens if you try to open it interactively?

Do any of the data get read in correctly?

Our best guess is that it is an Excel security issue.

[ian.e.preston]

Not sure what you mean by interactively. Can you clarify?
I'm stumped too, this file is generated by Cognos report studio, saved on a network drive. Other reports generated in the same manner saved in the same location don't have this issue. The one distinction I can think of is that the date is sorted alphabetically, as was pointed out. I don't know why having the file open in excel makes a difference for that though.

[ian.e.preston]

Ok, I recoded the query so dates are in chronological order. Same error.

[EViews Gareth]

If you use File-Open rather than using a command to open the file.

[ian.e.preston]

I think I'm missing something here. Are we talking about the excel file or the eviews file?
Here are the combinations I can think of, and the outcomes that result from them:
Attempt to import into eviews without Excel open:
-Importing the data via script claims.prg - previously quoted error message
-From eviews opening my workfile, going to file -> import and trying to load the data - only shows claim header, no other columns for sectors and no actual data, can't import

Have Excel file open prior to importing to Eviews:
I can do this by double clicking the Excel file, or opening excel and the going to file -> open and loading the file, no difference
Both manual import and importing via script work fine

Does this help narrow it down?

[EViews Gareth]

Somewhat.

What happens if you save it as .xls rather than .xlsx?