Loading data from Google Spreadsheets

[tshare]

Hello,

Is there a relatively quick way to load data from online spreadsheets, such as Google Spreadsheets, directly into Strata?

Thanks,
Timothy

[Ken]

Hi Timothy,

Since Google Spreadsheets "takes over" the right-click functionality, Strata can't import the table like it normally would. Here are a few workarounds:

1) In Google Spreadsheets, select File > Export > .csv file. In Strata, Google has it pop up as text file in the browser window. Select File > Save As External and then save the file to your desktop as something like "myfile.csv" (make sure to include the .csv extension). Then, select File > Open and select your newly saved "myfile.csv" and this will pop open in Strata as a normal table.

2) In Google Spreadsheets, select File > Export > .html sheet only. In Strata, this will pop up as a fixed HTML table. Then, you can just right-click and select "Import Table" as normal. Due to Google's HTML, it looks like Strata is not auto recognizing the headers (at least in my example), so you'll need to right-click on that first record and select "Delete Record" to give yourself a clean data set. Field headers can be added by going to View > Design View. I'll post this in our bug list and see if we can't come up with a workaround for getting the headers to show properly in a future upgrade.

Unfortunately, the code that Google Spreadsheets is using is not letting us do the 1-click Web import we normally like to see on the Web... but I'll add this use case to our bug/feature list and we can try to address it for a future release.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
ken

[tshare]

Thanks for the response. Does the same issue apply to other online spreadsheets, such as Zoho or Editgrid (my favorite)?
Timothy

[Ken]

Hi Timothy,

Both of these work great. For both, you'll run into the same issue where you can't just "right-click" in Strata, since the online spreadsheet's controls take precedence. However, here is how you can open your tables in Strata:

* Zoho Sheet: Just click "Export To: Comma Separated Values (CSV)" and it will pop open immediately in a Strata table. Also, it looks like they offer an HTML view, which you can use Strata's right-click Import Table functionality.

* EditGrid: Just select File > Export As > CSV (csv) and your table will pop open in Strata. In the one spreadsheet I tried, the headers didn't import correctly in Strata, so I needed to toggle to the Source View (View > Source View) and select the checkbox next to "First row contains field names" and then toggle back to the table view for everything to match up correctly.

Hope that helps; as you try it on your own data, please let us know if you have any other questions.