Question

I’m collecting some data via a Perl script. The data needs to be reviewed and processed by others using Excel. Currently, I’m writing the data out as a tab-delimited text file, and Excel can open this just fine.

There’s a hierarchy to the data, however, and it would be easier for the reviewers to see a tree rather than a flat list. That is, rather than presenting the data in columns,

foo    foo1
foo    foo2
foo    foo3
bar    bar1
bar    bar2
...

present it as a click-to-expand tree:

foo
    foo1
    foo2
    foo3
bar
    bar1
    bar2
...

Excel’s group function (found in 2007 under “Data > Outline > Group”) is a good match for this presentation, being a bit simpler to operate than pivot tables.

What is the easiest way for us to go from this flat list of columns to this grouped list? Ideally, I could write out the data in a text form that Excel would apply the grouping automatically when it was imported. Alternatively, if there were a small number of steps the reviewer could apply after importing the data, like applying a macro or a template, that would be OK too.

Answer 1

Since you are already using perl, I suggest that you create the excel file directly in perl using the excellent CPAN module Spreadsheet::WriteExcel which has support for Excel outlines.

Works something like this:

     .
     .
     $worksheet->write('A2',  'foo');
     $worksheet->write('B3',  'foo1');
     $worksheet->write('B4',  'foo2');
     $worksheet->write('B5',  'foo3');
     $worksheet->set_row(2,  undef, undef, 0, 1, 1);
     $worksheet->set_row(3,  undef, undef, 0, 2);
     $worksheet->set_row(4,  undef, undef, 0, 2);
     $worksheet->set_row(5,  undef, undef, 0, 2);
     .
     .