[Qgis-developer] Re: Excel Export from QGIS

[Alister Hood]

> As others have mentioned, many people want to export to Excel mainly
for
> formatting and printing, perhaps with some added calculations.  The
> ideal would be to improve formatting and printing in QGIS so that this
> isn't necessary.
> Spreadsheets aren't particularly great for it anyway, and doing it in
> QGIS would mean that you wouldn't need to export and format again if
the
> data is updated.
> I imagine this could eventually be quite a lot of work - perhaps it
> would be a good idea for a Summer of Code project.  I guess it would
> include work on:
> - table formatting
> - number formatting (also see #4426, although that is not about
> specifying how data in an existing column is displayed).

Actually, if virtual columns and #4426 were implemented, changing the
number format displayed in existing columns isn't completely necessary -
you could just put an expression using the proposed number format
function in a virtual column, and hide the original column.

> - virtual columns (similar to the new expression based labelling).
> - easy breaking of tables across multiple pages, page numbering etc.
>
> Some people also like to export data to Excel, modify it, and bring it
> back into GIS.  Like someone said, this is a recipe for headaches, if
> not disaster.  I think it would be great if we could identify any
> further enhancements to the attribute table and the field calculator
> which would help people not to do this.
>
> Alister