When working with a spreadsheet you have to be careful about its structure. Spreadsheets are not organized into records and fields the way databases are. However, since MapInfo Pro is organized as a database, it reads spreadsheet files as though they were database files. When MapInfo Pro reads a spreadsheet file it treats spreadsheet rows as records and spreadsheet columns as fields. Everything in a spreadsheet row is treated as though it were data about a single object. And all the items in a spreadsheet column are treated as though they were the same type of data about different objects.
In databases, the type of data to be found in a particular field is explicitly declared in the database structure. Since spreadsheets allow any type of data in any cell, there are no such explicit declarations. Therefore, when MapInfo Pro reads a spreadsheet, it determines the type of data by examining the data itself. Since it treats columns as database fields, it assumes that every cell in the column contains the same type of data.
Further, MapInfo Pro reads the column width as set in the spreadsheet and only reads the number of characters that fit the width. When a column width has been set to 9 and it contains the label "Sales Forecast," MapInfo Pro truncates that label to "Sales For."
Editing Excel and Lotus Spreadsheets
While you can directly access your Excel and Lotus spreadsheets, you can only read the information.
When you want to do any of the following tasks, on the HOME tab, in the File group, click Save Copy As to save the file in MapInfo Pro's format. The copy is a MapInfo Pro-format table, and you can treat it as any other MapInfo Pro table.
- Edit information from one of these files.
- Add new columns to one of these files. On the TABLE tab, in the Maintenance group, click Table, and Modify Structure.
- On the TABLE tab, in the Edit group, click Update Column to calculate new data values and place them into the file.
- Use Modify Structure to add graphic objects to the file.