Data from a datalogger are stored in several .txt files, all with the same number of columns and possibly different number of records/rows.
I have one “base” spreadsheet that makes calculations and charts with the logged data. One of its sheets can be updated by “reading” the data from one of the .txt files, that I can choose.
Initially made with Excel, it worked very well. The “refresh” function allows to load data from any chosen .txt file with the appropriate structure (number of columns).
Calc seems unable to load data directly from .txt files. I need to first convert the .txt files to ods sheets and to define the ranges of data, in order to be able to link the content to the cells of my “base” spreadsheet. That’s MUCH more time consuming.
Thanks for your help
Stefano
Posting wiki questions is not advisable, imo.
It is possible.
I rarely use such techniques and may therefore not see the simple way.
The original problem for me is the creation of a first linked formula. I cannot “click into the csv file” and thus have either to open the csv file with Calc (not saving it as an .ods) to get clickable cells, or to create the file part of the link from scratch.
This done I can build references into the text file using the respective addresses as if it is an ods file. As Calc references into external files always have a sheet part the name of the text file (without the extension .txt or .csv mostly) must be repeated in the syntactical position of the sheet name. (A csv can only contain one sheet surrogate anyway.)
An example for a range reference of the described kind used in an array-formula on my Win system:
{='file:///C:/Users/.../AsCsv.txt'#$AsCsv.A1:E9}
It works perfectly also for empty “virtual cells”.
If you create such a reference first you will be asked for the specifics: Separators, text delimiter…