Open Office Integration

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We are trying to integrate Open Office with SAP but running out of luck. I tried maintaining the OLE entries but not sure if I am missing any steps. Do I need to activate this in any other way other than running RSOLEINT. How do I see the changes? Downloading to a spreadsheet on a PC that just has Open Office and not Excel, results in an error stating "Not possible to setup a DDE connection to a local display service".

Please advice.

Thank You.

PS: Sorry if you have already seen this question in a different forum. I am just trying my best to get as much audience as possible.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Take a look at this wonderful article on SAP Desktop Office Integration Using ABAP Objects at http://www.intelligent-apps.com/feature/archive/ehre.jhtml . See if it helps with your efforts.

There has been a lot of discussion already on DOI on this forum. Try searching for OLE and I am sure you will get something useful. Otherwise, please post your code so that we can try to assist you.

Regards

[christian_wohlfahrt]

Hi,

I haven't heard of complete desktop office integration (DOI) with Open Office - so direct calls and field fillings.

But I worked already with a 4.7 system, where some documents were stored in SBWP (common folders). On my computer were installed MS Office and Open Office, which was configured to handle all files (like *.xls, *.doc, ...). By clicking a spreadsheet or textdocument (with excel or word icons ) file was downloaded and my Open Offices opened. After saving I could upload changed version - pretty much like other users with MS Office.

To test your general settings: works download / change / upload with MS Office? If yes, is your Open Office configured to handle MS file formats by default?

Regards,

Christian

[Former Member]

Thanks Shehryar and Christian. Those were pretty good answers. Let me explain in detail as to what dilemma I am facing.

We would like to roll out Open Office to all our users and by doing so should not effect the current process that they are so used to. One main concern is the download capability from any SAP screen as a local file under the SpreadSheet option. When this option is selected SAP downloads the data as a tab-delimited file and Open Office cannot open this as a spreadsheet directly as Excel can. I need to open the App, choose open file and select a different file type and go through a bunch of steps before it can process it as a spreadsheet. I was wondering if anyone knew a easier workaround for this.

Next thing was regarding ALV options. Selecting the Excel button actually requires the Excel app installed on the PC. No other option works. Selecting the option to download the data as spreadsheet in the Grid Control screens again looks for Excel or Lotus Workbook. No other option works here again. DOI sounds excellent but if SAP decides to look only for "Excel" what are our options? I even configured the OLE entries but looks like the code doesn't even care for these entries but rather checks the registry directly.

One interesting note to mention here is a reply from SAP to my OSS ticket that SAP supports only Excel and there are no plans to support Open Office or anyother office software.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Please advise.

Thank You.

[christian_wohlfahrt]

As you said: ALV works only with Excel (like SAP confirmed via OSS) - only additional development on Open Office site might change this situation.

Here I see no help (in near future).

Can Open Office open tab delimited file as spreadsheet (directly)? There might be a chance, I will make some tests later.

Regards,

Christian

[Former Member]

Hi,

I haven't worked with Open Office before, but a quick search on www.openoffice.org revealed that an ActiveX is installed for Windows. For further details on ABAP OLE Automation Controller, take a look at <b>ABAP Programming and Runtime Environment-->External Program Interfaces</b> in the SAP Documentation installed on your app server. There are various samples available in SAP, trn code DWDM, for ActiveX integration and OLE automation. Please check these out.

For the standard list download functions in SAP, I don't think you can replace those with your own, but as far as ALV is concerned, you can create your own button in the application toolbar that launches the OpenOffice Application you desire.

Please get back with what you have tried so far and then perhaps we can figure out a way.

Regards

[Former Member]

Thanks a lot guys for all the helpful suggestions. I guess I will end up spending a lot more time on this than I visualized. Will keep you posted on what I could achieve on this. Please let me know if you come across anything more on this topic.

Thanks again.

[christian_wohlfahrt]

Hi,

some results of my tabbed file testing:

I created two example files: three columns, two lines, separated by comma / tab.

File ending was *.csv -> special import filter of Open Office was active.

I didn't want to change my file assignments, but using 'open with' I started Open Office with these files. Popup with import settings (like code page, field separators,...) was triggered immediately.

Okay, I had to chose 'delimited with tab' / 'delimited with comma', but after two clicks I got perfect spreadsheet.

So this way can be little shorter than your earlier tests have shown. Looks like file name *.csv (or *.txt) is important step.

Regards,

Christian

[Former Member]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for spending time on this. Truly appreciate the effort. It makes sense that the file has to be named with ".csv" extension. If by mistake ".txt" is assigned then the user has to go through an extra step by opening the application first. I wish there was a similar way if the user saves it as .xls extension. Reason for this being that, users are so used to Excel and downloading the files with .xls extension. Right now all tab-delimited files saved with ".xls" are opened as preformatted text files. Wish there was a macro that checks to see if its a tab-demilited file and does the appropriate logic.

Thanks again...