Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

[Bruce_Stough]

I am currently using Control.DoDragD rop to drop a text string into Excel. I
use the following code

DataObject dd = new DataObject();
dd.SetData(Data Formats.Text,"\ \\\ws-it-bstough\\ShareF older\\Test.wav ");
DoDragDrop(dd,D ragDropEffects. Copy);

The code works as expected but it will always populate into Excel as a
string literal and not as a link to the audio file. If I type the path into
a excel the link appears correctly. I am using a windows form in C# to
initiate the drag request.

Any Suggestions ?


Bruce Stough

https://www.cti-results.com

[Peter Duniho]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Bruce_Stough wrote:

I am currently using Control.DoDragD rop to drop a text string into
Excel. I use the following code
>
DataObject dd = new DataObject();
dd.SetData(Data Formats.Text,"\ \\\ws-it-bstough\\ShareF older\\Test.wav ");
DoDragDrop(dd,D ragDropEffects. Copy);
>
The code works as expected but it will always populate into Excel as a
string literal and not as a link to the audio file. If I type the path
into a excel the link appears correctly. I am using a windows form in
C# to initiate the drag request.
>
Any Suggestions ?

I'm not sure you're going to be able to do that using the Text data
format. I've noticed in the past that Excel won't auto-recognize URLs,
UNC paths, etc. except when parsing direct user-input.

If you were using automation, there might be a way to get it to do the
recognition explicitly, but AFAIK you can't hook that up to a simple D&D
operation.

The one thing that does come to mind is the possibility of creating a
..lnk format object for the DataObject. That might be in a format Excel
would recognize and paste in as an actual link.

Of course, how exactly to do that doesn't come immediately to mind. I
guess you'll have to look into that yourself. But it's a thought
anyway. :)

Pete

[Adrian Gallero]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Hi Bruce,

Bruce_Stough wrote:

>
The code works as expected but it will always populate into Excel as
a string literal and not as a link to the audio file. If I type the
path into a excel the link appears correctly. I am using a windows
form in C# to initiate the drag request.
>
Any Suggestions ?
>

I am not sure if you can use third party comopnents, but if that is
possible, we fully support dragging and dropping native xls data
(including hyperlinks) to and from Excel.

If you are insterested, you can take a look at

https://www.tmssoftware.com/go/?flexcelnet

download it, run the demo from the start menu, and select "API->Copy
and Paste" demo from the left menu. In the demo you will be able to
drag an hyperlink from Excel to the demo app, and then drag it again
from the demo app to Excel. Of course your app you can create the
hyperlink directly and let the user drag it to Excel.

The xls reading/writing/reporting part of FlexCel is free for non
commercial use, so it should be not a problem if your app is non
commercial. If it is commercial, I believe the price is quite
affordable anyway, and will pay itself very fast.

Best regards,
Adrian.

[=?Utf-8?B?QnJ1Y2VfU3RvdWdo?=]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Thanks Peter,
I have tried to use a LinkLabel object as well but Excel seems to be
rejecting all requests with the exception of Text, Bitmap or Metafile. I
will keep at it, and judging from the next sales post it is indeed possible.
:)

--
Bruce Stough
CTI-Results.Com


"Peter Duniho" wrote:

Bruce_Stough wrote:

I am currently using Control.DoDragD rop to drop a text string into
Excel. I use the following code

DataObject dd = new DataObject();
dd.SetData(Data Formats.Text,"\ \\\ws-it-bstough\\ShareF older\\Test.wav ");
DoDragDrop(dd,D ragDropEffects. Copy);

The code works as expected but it will always populate into Excel as a
string literal and not as a link to the audio file. If I type the path
into a excel the link appears correctly. I am using a windows form in
C# to initiate the drag request.

Any Suggestions ?

>
I'm not sure you're going to be able to do that using the Text data
format. I've noticed in the past that Excel won't auto-recognize URLs,
UNC paths, etc. except when parsing direct user-input.
>
If you were using automation, there might be a way to get it to do the
recognition explicitly, but AFAIK you can't hook that up to a simple D&D
operation.
>
The one thing that does come to mind is the possibility of creating a
..lnk format object for the DataObject. That might be in a format Excel
would recognize and paste in as an actual link.
>
Of course, how exactly to do that doesn't come immediately to mind. I
guess you'll have to look into that yourself. But it's a thought
anyway. :)
>
Pete
>

[Peter Duniho]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Adrian Gallero wrote:

[...]
I doubted a lot before posting, because I know mentioning your own
product has an adverse effect on many people, (and I am not going to
post under a fake account) but I thought this could honestly help.
After all, if this was not the correct solution for him, he could just
dismiss the message. Now really after reading both Bruce's and your
answer, I think I maybe should have keep myself shut.

Or perhaps you could have just been a little more clear about things.

I don't think that there's any need to have an absolute prohibition on
mentioning one's own products. There are indeed situations in which
it's appropriate to mention that as a possible solution. But your post
was missing some elements that IMHO would have been important in
differentiating a post that's a really honest attempt to be helpful from
a post intended simply to market one's own product.

Note that I'm not saying your intent wasn't honest. I'm simply saying
it wasn't immediately apparent from the post you made.

The reason I did not post a "suggestion on how to do it yourself" is
just because I don't know one. But I do know how to do it using our
library, and that is what I said.

Well, one thing you might have mentioned is that you don't actually know
how to do it yourself. Nothing in your post made it clear that in spite
of being involved with a product that apparently supports this feature,
you yourself had no involvement or understanding of the actual
implementation of that feature.

Obviously it would be unreasonable for anyone to be disappointed in you
for not sharing information you yourself do not have.

The solution I mentioned is simple on the conceptual part, and I am
glad to answer any question I can answer about it.
It just puts a "biff8" object into the clipboard, or drags a biff8
object into Excel. Just in case, Biff8 is the native file format in
Excel. And the code to do that is on the demo I mentioned, all source
for the demo is included in the file you can freely download from the
page. So I don't know what else I could have said.

Nothing in your post mentioned the availability of source code. Nor is
it clear from your post (or even now) that you are offering the source
code itself as a guide to a solution, as opposed to requiring some
payment to use the code.

IMHO, assuming Bruce doesn't just copy your code wholesale, but rather
just implements his own solution based on techniques found in your code,
that would be a fine approach for him to technique. I doubt you'd have
legal standing to demand payment from him either in that scenario.

But you didn't write anything in your post suggesting that as a
solution. You didn't even mention that the source code was available.
Just that you had a library he could license for that use.

[...]

>Now, whether this is a justifiable effort on your part depends on how
>closely tied to Excel you want to be. This would definitely be an
>Excel-specific thing, and might not be worth doing if your
>application is to support drag-and-drop to a wider variety of
>programs. But if you're writing something that is specifically to be
>used with Excel, it might be worth the effort.

>
You can copy more than one format to the clipboard. for example, text
for apps that do not understand biff8, and biff8 for Excel.

Yes. Believe it or not, I do understand that. My point is that
applications don't generally go around putting every possible format of
data onto the clipboard. An application would generally only put
Excel's format on the clipboard if there was a high expectation that the
target application would be Excel.

If Bruce is writing an application that just happens to paste file
references as text to the clipboard to be used by a wide variety of
applications, he may simply want to accept Excel's limitation as given
and not bother working around it (and IMHO this is definitely a
limitation in Excel...there's no fundamental reason Excel couldn't do
the same "link recognition" when pasting data as it does in other
scenarios).

On the other hand, if his application is designed specifically to work
with Excel, then yes...it likely would make a lot of sense to do
whatever work is required to ensure a seamless interaction between the
two applications.

Pete

[Adrian Gallero]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Peter,

You have expressed your opinion, I have expressed mine, and I don't
think it makes sense to repeat it again and again.

I think the root of all our misunderstandin gs is here:

>However, this forum is primarily for helping other people implement
>their own code.

I believe this forum is primarily for helping other people solve their
problems.

In you light, what you said makes sense. In my pov, whay I said (and
did) makes sense too.

This is my last post here, since this is not going nowhere.
Best regards,
Adrian.

[Adrian Gallero]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Hi Bruce,

Nice to know you could get something constructive after all. Hope you
can solve your problems, and if you have any doubt where you think I
can help about your implementation, please feel free to contact me.

Good luck :)
Adrian.

Thanks Peter, Adrian
I am sorry I misunderstood the original postings, but the
followups have been very insiteful. I will take a look at the biff8
format and see what it has to offer. After taking Peter's suggestion
I did notice that a memorywriter object is returned as the
dataformats are pretty much all encompassing. I assume this is the
standard return for a serializable object though.
I will post again as soon as everything becomes clear :)
>
Thanks again for everyones help.

--

[Peter Duniho]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Adrian Gallero wrote:

You have expressed your opinion, I have expressed mine, and I don't
think it makes sense to repeat it again and again.

Yet, you keep doing so. Odd.

I think the root of all our misunderstandin gs is here:
>

>However, this forum is primarily for helping other people implement
>their own code.

>
I believe this forum is primarily for helping other people solve their
problems.

And I believe that's far too general a description.

We are writing code here. As I've said, I'm not actually promoting a
no-exceptions rule to exclude any reference to third-party libraries.
Sometimes those are just the right solution.

But the preferred solutions should be in the form of real, usable code
that uses the .NET Framework (and only the .NET Framework) to solve the
problem. If a person has knowledge that would allow that form of
solution to be posted, they should share that rather than just hawking
their own wares.

And just to try to make this even more clear, since this doesn't seem to
be registering with you: at this point, it's clear you don't have that
knowledge, and so of course I don't fault you for not posting it. It's
just that your first post did not make this clear at all, thus my
initial reaction.

My primary complaint (if you can even call it that) at this point is
with respect to the potential improvement with respect to communicating
why you posted what you did instead of a full solution.

Like I said, if you can't post the actual answer to the question, that's
fine. But you should say so, to avoid any misunderstandin g as to
whether you are simply refusing to share your own knowledge in deference
to selling a product.

And to reiterate: it's simply the avoidance of the misunderstandin g that
I'm talking about. If you don't mind the misunderstandin g, then there's
absolutely no need for you to concern yourself with my comments.

I do think it's a bit silly of you to say that your original post was
perfectly clear; it seems to me that the mere fact that this thread has
taken the direction it has is proof enough that there's room for
improvement on the clarity front. But hey, that's your business. If
you think I'm wrong about that, there's no need for you to be offended
or argue about it. Just move on.

If you do insist on arguing about it, I am happy to oblige. At least,
to a point much farther than I suspect most people would. Even I have
my limits. :)

In you light, what you said makes sense. In my pov, whay I said (and
did) makes sense too.
>
This is my last post here, since this is not going nowhere.

You said that before too.

Pete

[Adrian Gallero]

Re: Dragging data to Excel using DoDragDrop

Hi Bruce,

Just an idea I had this morning (I sometimes can't help having those
ideas in the morning...)

You might try putting an RTF object in the clipboard. It will not be as
nice as a biff8 object, but Excel will probably understand the
hyperlink, and creating an RTF file is much easier than creating a
biff8 file. I have not tested it so I can not tell you if it works, but
it surely is worth a try.

Best regards,
Adrian.