Question

Keeping MS Excel cell references updated between two MS Excel files stored in Laserfiche?

Laserfiche

Updated July 24, 2015

asked on March 3, 2014 • Show version history

If I have two Excel spreadsheets, one of which references a cell (or cells) in a second, different Excel spreadsheet, can the cell references be maintained if the Excel files are stored in Laserfiche?

I've tested this and it seems like it is not possible, but maybe I haven't thought of everything.

Thanks for any ideas you may have.

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Answers

APPROVED ANSWER

replied on March 4, 2014 • Show version history

Kyle,

You can create links in spreadsheets in Laserfiche. You'll need to configure WebDAV on your Laserfiche server (and sometimes client). Once that's done, you can map a drive to your Laserfiche repository. It will also be important to enable the "save file extensions" option in the Laserfiche client.

Here is some Laserfiche-produced information on the topic:

https://support.laserfiche.com/search/SearchWF.aspx?q=webdav

To update existing document with an extension (such as .doc, .xlsx, etc), you could create a workflow to find all electronic documents on the system and then write some workflow code to re-apply extensions to your documents:

dim oDoc as LFDocument =me.Entry
odoc.Name=odoc.Name + "." + odoc.ElectFile.Extension

-Ben

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replied on March 4, 2014

Ben,

One does not need custom code to rename files.

Workflow Outline:

Assign Token Value (assign a multi-value token with the extensions you find in the LF Client search area, this should be all the extension types of documents inside the repository)
For Each Value: Using token with extensions
1. Search: based on entry name and extension (current value)
2. For Each Entry:
  1. Rename Entry: %(EntryName).%(Current Value)

The code you suggest, while accurate might be above the technical know how of the person asking the question and might add a level of difficulty when Workflow already has built in functionality. Your solution however may be faster, especially if you did the search in the script as well.

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SELECTED ANSWER

replied on March 3, 2014

Cell references are based on Excel being able to find the file system path to the referenced file. Since Laserfiche never provides a file system link, Excel will not be able to follow the references.

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Replies

replied on July 24, 2015

hi - I was wondering if Laserfiche will be addressing the issue of broken Excel links between workbooks retained in the repository - without having to install WebDAV?

Thanks.

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replied on April 22, 2014

We have a WebDAV installation and are able to maintain cell references between files in Laserfiche. WebDAV exposes the structure.

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replied on October 28, 2014

How stable is WebDav. if this is set up on the server is it a very reliable solution? Also I was under the impression that you could not save changes to files that were opened in WebDav. (it is read only?)

Thanks

Nate

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replied on October 28, 2014

Nate,

We have a WebDAV set up but we also run it through a Citrix environment. We had quite a time getting is stabilized (fought the green ribbon of death for a long time until we figured out the solution) but now that it is working, we don't have too many issues with it. We are able to save changes to files. One issue we still have is that we cannot do mail merges using a file in LF as the data source. The destination can be in LF, just not the data we are trying to merge into it. We are also having issues printing to PDF using the Adobe (or CutePDF) printer drivers and having it save directly to our WebDAV LF environment. Again, our situation is complicated by Citrix so you may not have these issues.

Hope that helps,

Susan

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replied on January 26, 2015

I believe webdav is setup for me, but all my files open locally, therefore i cannot link between excel documents.

Any ideas?

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replied on April 2, 2015

Were you able to test the answer that was provided? I also have users who work with large Excel files that contain links to other Excel workbooks - all of which we want to be saved in the same repository. We are just getting started with Laserfiche and the Excel linkages is a major concern for some users. We weren't going to install WebDAV as our rep actually discouraged installing WebDAV due to some instability? The link to the support documentation pointed me to a batch of WebDAV files rather than the one that would likely help us learn more.

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Keeping MS Excel cell references updated between two MS Excel files stored in Laserfiche?

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